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Apollo’s Fire: Bach’s Birthday Bash, Part I at Rocky River Presbyterian Church (October 12)

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by Nicholas Jones

AF-Intimate-BachJ. S. Bach would be astounded to find his 330th birthday celebrated with such fervor as it is this season in Northeast Ohio. Next weekend, the Cleveland Orchestra is marking the occasion with performances of the B-Minor Mass, and this past weekend Apollo’s Fire baked a scrumptious cake for the not-always-sweet cantor of Leipzig. Though the actual birthday isn’t until next March 21st, we got a sneak peek at the birthday presents early when music director Jeannette Sorrell presided over Apollo’s Fire’s program of Bach’s virtuosic instrumental music. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire to begin season with Bach, then it’s Monteverdi at home and on the road

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by Daniel Hathaway

AFatLECAlthough it seems odd for an ensemble who have performed together for over two decades, Apollo’s Fire is beginning its season with some first-time performances of well-known works by Johann Sebastian Bach — at least in their best-known versions.

“The E-Major Violin Concerto is popular and famous, and probably everybody, including our soloist, Olivier Brault, has played it many times elsewhere,” Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeannette Sorrell said in a Skype conversation. “It just so happens that we’ve never programmed it with Apollo’s Fire before. It’s a sparkling piece!” [Read more…]

Review: CIPC holds festive reunion of the Class of ‘13 at the Cleveland Museum of Art (August 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIPC-Four-BowsThe laureates of most international piano competitions vanish into the ether once the medals are bestowed and prizes awarded. Not so with the Cleveland International Piano Competition, whose leadership has sought new ways to keep its prizewinners in the local public eye and ear.

On Saturday afternoon, August 23, CIPC organized a reunion of its four top winners from 2013, one year and two weeks after the final round when they played concertos in Severance Hall with The Cleveland Orchestra. Last year they faced off as competitors, but on Sunday in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, they paired up collaboratively to play J.S. Bach double keyboard concertos with Apollo’s Fire and, in the second half of the 4:00 pm concert, swapped partners to play two-piano works by Mozart, Milhaud and Rachmaninoff. A gala dinner for patrons followed the performance in the museum’s Atrium. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire announces 2014-2015 Season

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by Daniel Hathaway

AFatLECApollo’s Fire will present seven local subscription programs totaling thirty concerts during its 23rd season in 2014-2015. Additionally, Cleveland’s baroque orchestra will make its debut at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in December and at London’s BBC Proms next August, undertake a national tour of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers in November, and appear on the Pittsburgh Renaissance & Baroque Society series in April. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire’s 2014 Countryside Concerts turn to Appalachian music in “Glory on the Mountain”

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by Mike Telin and Daniel Hautzinger

AF-Countryside-Sorrell“I’m excited because I feel like it might be one of the better things that I’ve put together,” Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeanette Sorrell exclaimed about her new program during a recent interview. While putting together her previous Appalachian-inspired program, “Come to the River,” Sorrell said, “I was pretty much a newcomer to the field. This time I feel I’m starting from a deeper place.”

Beginning on Thursday, June 12, and continuing through Sunday, June 22, at venues throughout the area (see our concert listings page for times and locations), Apollo’s Fire will present “Glory on the Mountain: An Appalachian Journey.” The concerts will feature the mixture of fiddle tunes, ballads, shape-note hymns, and spirituals that typify Appalachian music. (An extra performance on Saturday, June 14 at 3:00 pm has just been announced.)

“With ‘Come to the River’ I spent two years researching fiddle tunes and ballads from Appalachia and it was a wonderful introduction into that repertoire. I had heard some lovely ballads when I was in the Shenandoah Valley as a teenager, but it was not the music that I was performing and studying as my profession,” Sorrell recalled. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire in passionate music (mostly) by Handel and Vivaldi (April 26)

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by Timothy Robson

FORSYTHE-Amanda-greenThis weekend Apollo’s Fire, directed by Jeannette Sorrell, gave four performances of their latest program, The Power of Love: Passions of Handel and Vivaldi. The featured soloist was the brilliant young soprano Amanda Forsythe. I heard the Friday night concert at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, with its newly renovated acoustics which livened up the sound considerably. The music was mostly Handel and Vivaldi, but Jean-Philippe Rameau made a couple of cameo appearances as well.

One of the hallmarks of Apollo’s Fire’s performances is the naturalness and freedom of their music-making. Although very carefully planned and rehearsed, the musicians always project a sense of spontaneity and improvisation. Also, Jeannette Sorrell is not afraid to make things her own, as exemplified in the program by two of her transcriptions of Vivaldi works that opened and closed the concert. The Allegro from the Concerto in D, RV511, originally for two violins, was arranged as a concerto grosso. It was stylishly done, and had the program not stated it that it was an arrangement, few would have been the wiser. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire Young Artists Concert at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights (March 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

AF-YA

Much of the classical music world still operates on the time-honored apprentice system, which emphasizes hands-on training over degrees and diplomas. Apollo’s Fire showcased four of its young artists in two concerts last weekend. I caught the performance on Saturday evening, March 15 in Tucker Hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. Billed as “Music Collision: Art Meets Folk, 1614,” the hour-and-a-half performance featured soprano Madeline Apple Healey, violinists Augusta McKay Lodge and Cynthia Black, and viola da gambist David Ellis in various solo and ensemble combinations supported by AF artistic director Jeannette Sorrell at the harpsichord and Daniel Shoskes on lute and theorbo.

[Read more…]

“Sephardic Journey” takes Apollo’s Fire in a new direction

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by Daniel Hathaway

SORRELL-Jeannette“It seemed like this was the next challenge,” said Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeannette Sorrell. “Our Celtic program in particular made me ready to tackle something new.”

That something new will reveal itself this week as Apollo’s Fire presents five performances of “Sephardic Journey: Wanderings of the Spanish Jews” beginning on Thursday, February 20 at Fairlawn Lutheran Church, with subsequent concerts at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights (February 21), The Temple-Tifereth Israel in Beachwood (February 22 & 25) and Rocky River Presbyterian Church (February 23). [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire — Praetorius Christmas Vespers at Trinity Cathedral (December 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Michael Praetorius

Michael Praetorius

Well before the more pietistic style of Lutheran church music that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote at Leipzig in the second quarter of the eighteenth century came the Italian-influenced, Renaissance style of Michael Praetorius, the subject of Jeannette Sorrell’s well-crafted and expertly performed Christmas Vespers with Apollo’s Fire, which began a four-concert run at Trinity Cathedral on Friday evening before moving on to three different venues around town.

You could hear the difference in approach in Philip Nicolai’s Wachet auf! Everyone knows the glorious, equal-note setting that ends Bach’s cantata of the same name. Not so familiar is the early form of the chorale tune with its dancelike, uneven rhythms, nor its delightful and ornate elaboration by Praetorius from his 1619 collection Polyhymnia caduceatrix. The latter, already bursting at its seams with exuberance, was decorated even further by Apollo’s Fire’s violinists and cornetto players (Olivier Brault, Johanna Novom, Kiri Tollaksen and Nathaniel Cox), who could barely force themselves to arrive at the final chord at several cadences. [Read more…]

Preview: Apollo’s Fire Praetorius Christmas Vespers — reflections from soprano soloists Nell Snaidas and Teresa Wakim

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by Mike Telin

AF-Praetorius-VespersIn her program notes for this week’s concerts Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeannette Sorrell writes, “Martin Luther had many students and disciples. One of them was named Praetorius, and that student had a son named Michael. Michael became – along with J.S. Bach – one of the two greatest composers in the history of Protestant church music.” Beginning on Friday, December 13 with performances continuing through the 16th at locations in Cleveland and Akron, Apollo’s Fire presents Praetorius Christmas Vespers: A Dramatic Holiday Celebration.

Compiled by Jeannette Sorrell and premiered in December 2005, the Christmas Vespers features the splendor of trumpets, sackbuts, virtuoso cornettos, antiphonal choirs, lutes, strings and recorders. The concerts also feature the Apollo’s Singers and the Apollo’s Fire Musettes, youth who have been chosen by Sorrell to perform Praetorius’s music intended for children’s voices. Returning to Cleveland and the Apollo’s Fire stage are three renowned soloists, sopranos Nell Snaidas, Teresa Wakim, and Amanda Powell.

“I’m in love with the German music of this time period, and there’s something about this Christmas Vespers that Praetorius wrote and Jeannette put together. [Read more…]

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