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Burning River Baroque tells
the “Other Side of the Story”

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by Mike Telin

Curating thoughtfully-programmed, politically-inspired concerts has become a calling card for the innovative, Cleveland-based ensemble Burning River Baroque.

In the past year, soprano Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust have presented “Suppressed Voices: Music of the Banished” which featured music by Johann Rosenmüller —  a German who escaped to Italy after being imprisoned for homosexuality — and Peter Philips, who was imprisoned as a Catholic in Anglican England, then later fled to the Spanish Netherlands. “Destructive Desires” examined works by Couperin, Rameau, Jacquet de la Guerre, Caccini, Eccles, and Courbois under the light of the #MeToo era.

On Wednesday, March 20 at Glo, Rauschenfels and Maust will be joined by Sarah Lynn, baroque flute, and Glenna Curren, baroque cello, in a concert titled “The Other Side of the Story.” The program, which draws on ancient mythology, literature, and Biblical passages, highlights characters whose viewpoints are underrepresented.

Presented by Fresh Perspectives, the evening includes a 6:45 pm pre-concert talk with host Devin Hinzo and musician Zach Manzi. [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque: “Destructive Desires” (Oct. 20)

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by David Kulma

Burning River Baroque’s October 20 performance at St. Alban’s Church in Cleveland Heights was a case study in thoughtfully-programmed, politically-inspired concerts. Titled “Destructive Desires” and framed by informed program notes and remarks, the performance invoked the ongoing #MeToo movement. Soprano and Baroque cellist Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust also spoke about their own thoughts and experiences, bringing the feminist slogan “The Personal Is Political” to life.

[Read more…]

Burning River Baroque examines old works under #MeToo lens

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Everyone agrees, it’s a deeply troubling time. Where we disagree: which parts are troubling, and how to respond to those troubles — a question artists continue to grapple with.

Some see their art as an important refuge, something that’s both pure and purifying. Others feel art should dig into the noise, perhaps as a way to understand it more deeply.

The latter mindset informs the most recent program from Burning River Baroque. In three concerts this weekend, Malina Rauschenfels (Baroque cello, soprano) and Paula Maust (harpsichord) will examine works by Couperin, Rameau, Jacquet de la Guerre, Caccini, Eccles, and Courbois under the light of the #MeToo era. They’ll also compare texts from those pieces with lyrics from some of today’s pop music to see what has changed, and what hasn’t.

Rauschenfels and Maust will bring “Destructive Desires” to St. Alban Episcopal Church on Saturday, October 20 at 7:30 pm, then to the sanctuary at Lakewood Congregational Church on Sunday, October 21 at 2:00 pm. A donation of $10-20 is suggested, and Sunday’s proceeds will benefit YWCA Greater Cleveland. An earlier house concert will take place on Friday, October 19 beginning at 7:30 pm in Cleveland Heights — details here on how to attend.

[Read more…]

Burning River Baroque to present “At a Crossroad: Will You Live, Love, or Die?”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Malina Rauschenfels PC Tom HugheyAsk about something musically outside the box, and Malina Rauschenfels has probably done it. Yes, she’s played a work for cello with two bows. Yes, she’s performed as a dancing violinist. And yes, of course she’s premiered an upside-down flute duet — her own composition.

So when it comes to singing and playing an instrument at the same time, well that’s nothing for this vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, who co-directs Burning River Baroque along with harpsichordist Paula Maust.

Rauschenfels and Maust will bring that ensemble’s program of French Baroque cantatas and harpsichord solos — titled “At a Crossroad: Will You Live, Love, or Die?” — to three venues in Cleveland from Friday through Sunday. They’ll visit Historic St. John’s Episcopal Church on May 18 at 7:30 pm, Heights Arts on the 19th at 7:00 pm, and Mary Queen of Peace Church on the 20th at 4:00 pm, before heading to Berkeley, California for a performance on June 6.

[Read more…]

Burning River Baroque: “Suppressed Voices” at Lakewood Congregational (March 23)

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by David Kulma

Burning RIver BaroqueA stylish concert of Baroque music called “Suppressed Voices: Music of the Banished” took place in the intimate Chapel at Lakewood Congregational Church on Friday night, March 23. Burning River Baroque’s program featured music by three banished composers little performed today — and the ubiquitous Handel, represented by his cantata about a Roman political exile.

[Read more…]

Twisted Fate: Famed and Forgotten Female Composers — Burning River Baroque at St. Alban’s (Sept. 17)

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by Nicholas Jones

For its 2016 season-opener on September 17 at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Burning River Baroque assembled a fascinating and diverse program of music by women composers, both “famed and forgotten.” The pieces they chose — spanning ten centuries! — gave a taste of what gems lie beyond the patriarchal canon, particularly in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque to examine
the “colorful lives of composers”

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by Daniel Hathaway

BRB-RoomSinger and cellist Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust will be featured in Burning River Baroque’s next pair of performances, entitled “Forces of Good and Evil: the colorful lives of composers” on Saturday, January 23 at 7:30 pm at St. Alban’s Church in Cleveland Heights, and Sunday, January 24 at 3:00 pm at Mary Queen of Peace Church in Old Brooklyn. (Note correct dates!)

The program centers around the idea that music transcends the personal traits of its creators — that whether composers were virtuous in their private lives like Henry Purcell (who was still capable of writing scatalogical rounds) or Tarquinio Merula, who was apparently a difficult employee and was censured for “indecency manifested towards several of his pupils,” their music “remains exquisite enough to stand the test of time,” as Maust writes in her program notes.

The program begins with the good guys: Purcell’s If music be the food of love, and French cello virtuoso Jean Barrière’s Sonata in c minor from his second book of sonatas, composed between 1733 and 1739. Barrière escapes close personal scrutiny because little is known about his life, which “seems to have been quite ordinary,” Maust says, adding that Barrière was the first to compose entirely idiomatic cello music during the first half of the 18th century. [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque: “A Voice in the Wilderness” at Trinity Lutheran Church, Ohio City (October 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Trinity-Lutheran-Berghaus-photoOn Friday, October 17, Burning River Baroque — Peter Lekx, violin, Malina Rauschenfels, soprano and cello & Paula Maust, organ — presented the first of three performances of sacred German baroque music in an especially appropriate venue. Trinity Lutheran Church, a 19th century Gothic edifice in Ohio City, was built by a German congregation and houses a distinguished 1955 Rudolph von Beckerath neo-baroque organ. [Read more…]

Review: Burning River Baroque: “Obsession and Unrequited Love” at Trinity Cathedral (June 1)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BRB-at-Trinity-060114

The word “Baroque” trips so easily off our modern tongues that we forget a few things about its origin. First of all, nobody in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thought they were writing “Baroque” music. Later critics used the term (which plausibly derives from the Portuguese word for “a pearl of irregular shape”) in a pejorative sense to describe art that was too ornate, busy or emotional.

What we also forget is that the music and art of that period was meant to be inordinately decorative and hyper-expressive, pushing as it did against the cool, rational conventions of the Renaissance. To be reminded of those values, all you need to do is to check out a performance by the enterprising — and surprising — musicians of Burning River Baroque. [Read more…]

Burning River Baroque to explore “Obsession and Unrequited Love” in three concerts this weekend

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by Daniel Hathaway

BurningRiverBaroqueStAlban“We have a penchant for the dramatic,” Burning River Baroque artistic director and violinist Peter Lekx said in a recent Skype conference call. “This program found itself when we discovered Nicola Porpora’s cantata, Destatevi, destatevi o pastore. It just screamed Burning River Baroque.”

“It’s about a broken-hearted shepherd who falls hopelessly in love with a nymph,” added Burning River Baroque soprano and executive director Malina Rauschenfels. “He takes himself way too seriously and writes his own epitaph on a tree.”

According to Lekx and Rauschenfels, who collaborate to plan BRB’s programs and finish each other’s sentences when they talk about that process, the rest of the program of Italian baroque cantatas and instrumental sonatas that the ensemble will perform three times this weekend began to fall neatly into place. “Giovanni Bononcini’s Alle sue pene intorno and Domenico Scarlatti’s No, non fuggire o Nice spoke to uswith their energy, and in the second case, with its Spanish flair. A very dramatic Porpora cello sonata and violin sonatas by Veracini and Scarlatti fill out the program.” [Read more…]

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