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Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute: Week Two, Day Five (Friday, June 30)

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by Daniel Hathaway

LisaCoaching063017Friday morning’s harpsichord master class was the last opportunity to formally pick our mentor’s brains, and performances by the last set of students inspired Mark Edwards and Lisa Goode Crawford to deliver some very useful tips.

Performance No. 1 was a C-major prelude from the Wilhelm Friedemann Bach Notebook — a set of pieces Johann Sebastian Bach expressly selected for the tutelage of his eldest son beginning in 1720. Edwards began by asking what type of piece it was. Answer: a figuration prelude, in style brisé, which is meant to imitate the lute. In fact, Edwards said, the harpsichord is really a giant lute with keys. Advice to student: overhold notes (including octaves in the left hand), let the strings vibrate, and think of articulation in terms of wetness vs. dryness. [Read more…]

Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute: Week One, Day Three (Wednesday, June 21)

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by Daniel Hathaway

D'anglebert-table-of-ornamentsLisa Crawford spent Wednesday’s harpsichord master class drilling down into French keyboard practice and technique. I was the first to play, and the piece was Jean-Henri D’Anglebert’s arrangement of Lully’s Ouverture to Proserpine. Here, Crawford concentrated on notes that needed emphasis or de-emphasis though articulation, an effect that could partly be accomplished by fingering.

Broadening the topic to editions of works, she said that the beautiful, digitally engraved score I and most of the class had downloaded from IMSLP — everyone’s favorite online source for free music — presented problems. [Read more…]

Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute: Week One, Day Two (Tuesday, June 20)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Meyerson-HuddleAt BPI, as elsewhere in the musical universe, master classes are the principal conduit for transferring wisdom from teachers to students. Rather than just dryly lecturing on abstract topics, distinguished musicians use performances of selected works as the springboard for discussions of matters both wide and narrow.

Harpsichord master classes on Monday with Lisa Goode Crawford, Mark Edwards, and Mitzi Meyerson offered a long list of takeaways, but also introduced BPI’s 22 harpsichordists to the unique personalities of their mentors [Read more…]

Bach at Oberlin BPI: the B-minor Mass in Warner Concert Hall (July 1)

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by Nicholas Jones

BPI-Mass-Concert-1Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor is, to say the least, a daunting work. It’s full of challenging vocal and instrumental parts that seem to venture into every key in the theory book. It’s composed of one complicated counterpoint after another. And like any sung mass, its musical integrity can seem at odds with the liturgical functions of the texts. And it’s long (over two hours). In its recent embodiment at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute (BPI), all of these challenges seemed to disappear. [Read more…]

Les Délices: Sponseller & Street in “The Imaginary Orchestra” (January 16)

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by Daniel Hathaway

2-HarpsichordsRecitals that feature duo-harpsichordists are rare enough treats, but the program of French baroque music that Michael Sponseller and Jacob Street played on Les Délices’ series at The Galleries at Cleveland State University on Saturday evening, January 16, was an extraordinary tasting menu of twenty opera-related delights. These ranged from the ancien cuisine music of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marin Marais to the nouvelle cuisine experiments of Armand-Louis Couperin, sandwiched around ten wonderfully varied main courses by Jean-Philippe Rameau and followed by a pair of postprandial confections supplied by Pancrace Royer. [Read more…]

Les Délices’ The Imaginary Orchestra:
a conversation with harpsichordists Michael Sponseller and Jacob Street

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by Mike Telin

Sponseller-Street“When you work in baroque opera, the job of a harpsichordist is to also be the Répétiteur,” Michael Sponseller explained during a recent conference call with fellow harpsichordist Jacob Street. “During the rehearsals, our job is to take the score and figure out how to make one harpsichord sound like an orchestra.”

This weekend, Les Délices will prove that two harpsichords are better than one when Michael Sponseller and Jacob Street combine their musical wizardry for two concerts entitled “The Imaginary Orchestra.”

The program, presented on Saturday, January 16 at 8:00 pm in The Galleries at Cleveland State University and on Sunday at 4:00 pm at Herr Chapel in Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, will feature arrangements from operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marin Marais, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and Pancrace Royer, as well as the rarely heard symphony for two harpsichords by Armand-Louis Couperin. Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy and harpsichordist Lisa Goode Crawford will present a pre-concert talk at each performance. [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute — From the Valley of the Danube (June 28)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin-BPI-Orchestra“We could have chosen all Transylvanian music,” quipped artistic director Kenneth Slowik during the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute faculty concert in Warner Concert Hall last Friday evening, “but we decided to go for quality: Austria.” This year’s BPI theme focused on music by composers who lived and worked in lands touched by the Danube River, with special attention to the exotic string music of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. In addition to his Battalia, student and faculty ensembles regaled a large and appreciative audience with music by Georg Muffat, Emperor Leopold I, Johann Joseph Fux and the young Joseph Haydn.

Though most of the repertory on Friday evening fell into the “not often played nor heard” category, Biber’s battle piece had the distinction of appearing on two area concert programs last week (it was also on the menu for ChamberFest Cleveland at Mixon Hall on Wednesday evening). This short and entertaining Baroque tone poem from 1673 depicts a motley and dissolute group of soldiers who get drunk and sing different songs at the same time, go into battle then lament their fallen fellows. An ensemble of three violins, four violas, two cellos, theorbo and harpsichord led by principal violinist Julie Andrijeski created cacophony worthy of Charles Ives and plausible battle sounds with dramatic snap pizzicatos. [Read more…]

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