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After summer triumphs on the road, Apollo’s Fire plans eight programs at home

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by Daniel Hathaway

SORRELL-JeannetteFollowing a series of sold-out concerts at Tanglewood and in England (London and Aldeburgh) and Italy, Cleveland’s baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire is busy putting the finishing touches on the eight programs they are planning around the area this season. We reached founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell to chat about last summer’s experiences and her plans for the season to come.

I began by asking about Apollo’s Fire’s debut at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. “It was really fun,” Sorrell said. “We had no idea that we were going to be sold out at Tanglewood. It was really a personal homecoming because I had studied in the conducting class there back in 1989 and I have such moving memories of that summer working with Leonard Bernstein and Roger Norrington. [Read more…]

French dances and more: “Toutes Suites” with Les Délices on LCCC Signature Series (September 24)

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by Nicholas Jones

Les-Delices-092415On Thursday the distinguished Cleveland-based group Les Délices, which specializes in French music of the 18th century, gave the first concert in this year’s Signature Series at Lorain County Community College’s Cirigliano Theater. With this performance, the series, which is curated by LCCC Distinguished Professor and composer Jeffrey Mumford and mostly presents new music, took a plunge into early music. Lully is a far cry from Ligeti, but maybe baroque is the new avant-garde?

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons at Rocky River Presbyterian Church (Ap. 19)

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by Nicholas Jones

AF-Olivier-JeannetteThe challenge for any group that takes on The Four Seasons is to “make it new,” as the poet Ezra Pound enjoined his fellow modernists. Performed and recorded time and again, Vivaldi’s most famous pieces are in perpetual danger of being played (and heard) as baroque elevator music. Apollo’s Fire, with soloist Olivier Brault, met the challenge head-on in a dramatic, fresh interpretation of these Venetian masterpieces. [Read more…]

Les Délices: Cantiques Spirituels in Fairchild Chapel, Oberlin (March 6)

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by Nicholas Jones

LesDelicesRehearsalNow that the sun is finally beginning to melt some of Cleveland’s snow piles, the Cleveland-based band Les Délices reminds us of the wintry darkness from which we earnestly hope soon to emerge. In a departure from their usual repertoire — the secular music of the French baroque — the group served up a rich and satisfying feast of Lenten fare, a concert of sacred music for the Christian season of penitence and reflection. (This concert repeats on Saturday, March 7, at St. Peter’s Church, Cleveland (7:30 pm) and Sunday, March 8, at Plymouth Church UCC, Shaker Heights (4:00 pm). [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…]

Review: Les Délices — Conversations galantes at Tregoning & Co. (February 1)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Les-Delices-3Les Délices, the Cleveland early music ensemble that devotes itself to resurrecting treasures from the French Baroque, designed its mid-winter program, Conversations galantes, around the idea of musical conversation as that social art was practiced in the salons of eighteenth-century Paris.

Alas, there were fewer voices in last weekend’s discussions than originally planned. Nagy had lined up a program of quartets, but a sudden illness reduced the group to oboe, violin and harpsichord and the playlist had to be changed accordingly. Happily, the repartée in the altered program was probably no less eloquent. In music by Rameau, Leclair, François Couperin and Forqueret, Debra Nagy, Julie Andrijeski and Michael Sponseller provided plenty of engaging wit and delicious colloquy to delight the audience at Tregoning & Co. gallery on Saturday evening.

The hour-long program began and ended with all hands on deck. [Read more…]

Preview: Les Délices: “Conversations Galantes” — Visiting the Salons of 18th-Century Paris

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Les-Delices-3The salons of eighteenth century Paris sparkled with witty repartee, political argument, fashionable taste-making, and philosophical deliberation. The rigid hierarchy of the French court disappeared as ranks and genders mingled in exquisite conversation. On Saturday, February 1 at 8:00 pm at Tregoning & Co. Gallery in Cleveland and on Sunday, February 2 at 4:00 pm in Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, French Baroque specialists Les Délices will recreate that environment with their program Conversations Galantes.

“Conversations galantes is the idea of intellectual exchange that happens within the salon,” oboist and Les Délices director Debra Nagy said during a recent telephone conversation. “We’re featuring some of the earliest French quartet repertory, which is based on that idea of conversation, where all the voices are equal and contribute to what’s happening melodically.”

The title of the program comes from a 1743 collection of quartets by Louis-Gabriel Guillemain, some of which will be performed. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire — “Virtuoso Orchestra” at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, Cleveland Heights (October 12)

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by Nicholas Jones

AF-Virtuoso-OrchestraAs Apollo’s Fire heads out on a real tour across North American, last weekend’s set of concerts gave us a virtual tour of some of the top orchestras across Europe—all without leaving our seats. Talk about not leaving a carbon footprint!

As simply and quickly as on Google Earth, listeners swooped from one musical capital to another — from Hamburg on the North Sea, south to Venice on the Adriatic, and across what we now used to call East Germany, from Cöthen and Leipzig to Dresden.

Each of the sojourns featured one of the composers who lived and worked in that town – Telemann in Hamburg, Vivaldi in Venice, and Bach in Leipzig and Cöthen. Dresden—one of the grandest of the orchestras and the pride of the Elector of Saxony—was represented by the little known Johann David Heinichen.

The theme, “virtuoso orchestra,” led music director Jeannette Sorrell to feature concertos in which Apollo’s Fire’s soloists could step forward and dazzle us as their counterparts 300 years ago must have done. [Read more…]

Preview: Apollo’s Fire celebrates its twenty-second season with seven home programs and national and European tours

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by Daniel Hathaway

SORRELL-JeannetteAfter I congratulated her on launching her ensemble’s twenty-second season, Apollo’s Fire founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell said, “We’re into adulthood now, and we’re in a really fantastic place regarding our artistic reputation.” Cleveland patrons don’t need to be reminded of the high quality of playing their resident baroque orchestra turns in on a regular basis, but a wider audience is now sitting up and paying attention.

One indication of Apollo’s Fire’s “grown-up” status: the ensemble has recently been picked up by Columbia Artists Management Inc. (CAMI), “a big stamp of approval”, Sorrell said. “We’re the first period instrument orchestra to appear on their roster, and after twenty-one years of honing our craft and trying to perfect our art, it’s great to be getting global attention.”

We reached Jeannette Sorrell via Skype last weekend to chat about the multiple performances of seven programs that local audiences will enjoy in area church venues this season. It all begins with “Virtuoso Orchestra”, which opens on Thursday, October 10 at First Methodist in Akron and will be repeated on October 11 and 12 at Fairmount Presbyterian in Cleveland Heights and on October 13 at Rocky River Presbyterian.

Sorrell promises that the program will live up to its name with dazzling performances including Vivaldi’s concerto for four violins, Bach’s fourth Brandenburg Concerto and a novelty for local audiences, a concerto by J.D. Heinichen. [Read more…]

Review: Les Délices — A Woman Scorned at Plymouth Church (October 6)

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by Nicholas Jones

Les-Delices-Woman-Scorned-BustaAnger, murder, guilt, and recrimination! The last episode of Breaking Bad? No: this was the opening concert of the season for Les Délices, the remarkable Cleveland-based chamber group specializing in music of the French baroque.

The program, “A Woman Scorned,” featured lurid stories of betrayal and revenge involving five of the great women characters of classical myth. These were stories that the court of Louis XIV loved, apparently seeing them as safe ways in which to rehash their own tortuous infidelities: Juno, the goddess jealous of her philandering husband Jove; Phaedra, driven mad by passion for her stepson; Armida, sorceress and seductress; Circe, who turned men to beasts; and Medea, sorceress and lover—passed over by Jason for a younger woman, she proceeds to poison her rival and then murder her own children in order to drive her ex to kill himself.

Not material for the faint-hearted. [Read more…]

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