by Jarrett Hoffman
New York, March 27.
Apollo’s Fire brought the house down and the heart rates up at their Carnegie Hall debut last Thursday, March 22 at the venue’s cozy Zankel Hall in New York City. The highlight of this “Evening at Bach’s Coffeehouse” was the closer: a thrilling, caffeinating performance of Vivaldi’s “La Follia” Sonata for Two Violins and Continuo, arranged by artistic director, conductor, and harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell for this Cleveland-based Baroque orchestra.
by David Kulma
The Apollo’s Fire concert on Friday, February 9 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, “Three Duels and a Wedding” — with a surprise — highlighted three double concertos and the well-known Wedding Cantata by J.S. Bach. First, about the duels. The concert opened with Georg Philipp Telemann’s Concerto in e for flute and violin. Flutist Kathie Stewart’s pearly tone and concertmaster Olivier Brault’s joie de vivre were excellently complemented by harpsichordist/conductor Jeannette Sorrell and the ensemble. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Boston-based soprano Amanda Forsythe returns to Apollo’s Fire this weekend to sing Johann Sebastian Bach’s wedding cantata, Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten, with oboist Debra Nagy and Jeannette Sorrell’s period instrument ensemble. The program, titled “Three Duels and a Wedding,” also includes concertos by Bach and Telemann (those are the “Duels”), and will be performed in four different venues from February 8-11.
Forsythe has been a frequent guest of Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, having appeared with Apollo’s Fire in “Mozart and Papa Haydn” in 2013, “The Power of Love: Passions of Handel and Vivaldi” in 2014, and in Bach’s St. John Passion in 2016.
The soprano made a strong impression at the Boston Early Music Festival in 2013, when she sang the role of Edilia in Almira, Handel’s very first opera, written at the age of 19 and premiered in Hamburg in 1705. Reviewing those performances for The New York Times, James R. Oestreich found Forsythe “simply dazzling in her fioritura and her altitudinous rages.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The five sold-out performances of “Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” this month attest to the popularity of Apollo’s Fire’s crossover shows. Heard on Saturday, December 9 at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights, the holiday sequel to “Sugarloaf Mountain: an Appalachian Gathering” was just as alluring and infectious as its predecessor, even if some of its elements were still in the process of settling in. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
At its premiere in 1739, Handel’s Biblical oratorio Israel in Egypt was almost entirely made up of choruses. Even in the composer’s revision, minus the opening lament and with Italian arias added, the work is probably more rewarding to sing than to listen to. Enter Jeannette Sorrell, who decided to restore part of the introduction that Handel lopped off, and to bring the rest of the piece down to under two hours in length. Her version made a fine impression on Friday evening, when Sorrell led Apollo’s Fire, Apollo’s Singers, and five extraordinary soloists in a leaner Israel in Egypt at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Apollo’s Fire crowned its 25th anniversary season over the summer with sold-out performances at Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Cain Park. I reached Artistic Director Jeannette Sorrell to ask what’s ahead for Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra in 2017-2018.
Daniel Hathaway: You’ve planned some big works to begin and end your new season — Handel’s Israel in Egypt in the fall, and Monteverdi’s Orfeo in the Spring. I understand that you’ve created a special version of Handel’s famous, double-chorus oratorio for the October 12-15 performances in Northeast Ohio.
Jeannette Sorrell: I’ve always felt that Israel in Egypt is a great work, but performances I’ve heard didn’t always work for me. The original piece was in three parts, beginning with the “Lamentation on the Death of Jeremiah” and continuing with “Exodus” and “The Song of Moses.” Audiences today usually only hear the second and third parts, but the “Lamentation” contains some beautiful, poignant funeral music.
by Robert Rollin
Apollo’s Fire performed an outstanding early music concert at Cleveland Heights’ Cain Park Amphitheater last Saturday night, July 29. Outside the venue, wine tastings, accompanied vocals, and a lively barbershop quartet set a relaxed mood. The core of the program was the ensemble’s performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s complete The Four Seasons, with the four separate concerti spread throughout the evening. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
This summer, Apollo’s Fire audiences have had the opportunity to hear violinist Susanna Perry Gilmore explore two dimensions of her musical persona that aren’t part of her day job as concertmaster of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra — and which Jeannette Sorrell and Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra are largely responsible for developing.
Perry Gilmore appeared as a folk fiddler in “Mediterranean Roots” during the month of June, then turned to Baroque violin as soloist in the “Summer” concerto of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. The Vivaldi program was presented twice earlier this month in Northeast Ohio before going on tour to Youngstown and the Tanglewood, Gretna, and Ravinia Festivals. The show returns for two final performances at Cain Park and Laurel School’s Butler Campus on July 29 and 30.
How did the violinist originally become involved with Apollo’s Fire? “It was a serendipitous meeting,” Perry Gilmore said in a telephone conversation, explaining that Sorrell had made a guest appearance with the Omaha Symphony in the spring of 2014 in an all-Vivaldi program. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
On the seventh day, BPI rested — even Kathie Stewart, who is usually at work Monday through Friday shortly after dawn as Oberlin’s Curator of Harpsichords. Known publically to Apollo’s Fire audiences as the principal flutist in Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Stewart’s role at BPI is usually hidden from sight, although the results of her labors are crucial to the work of BPI’s 22 harpsichord students.
Few other institutions could provide multiple practice instruments for that many keyboardists. BPI students have access to 18 harpsichords of various configurations, and Stewart tunes them all every weekday beginning between 6:00 and 6:30 am. “In ten days, that comes out to 180 tunings, plus another 20 for concerts and faculty rehearsals,” she told me, taking a break from touching up one of Lisa Goode Crawford’s personal instruments. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
To cap off its 25th anniversary season, Jeannette Sorrell and Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, made a big leap across historical and stylistic boundaries into the early Romantic music of Beethoven. In the second of four performances on Friday evening, April 28 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Sorrell fielded an orchestra of 49 players (huge by AF standards) and joined forces with violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley (making his period instrument debut) to lead a spirited foray into music premiered in the first decade of the 19th century. [Read more…]