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Apollo’s Fire: Virtuosity: Fireworks from J.S. Bach
(Video from April performances)

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by Daniel Hathaway

A virtuoso is a highly skilled performer, and a virtuoso performance is one that astonishes the audience by its feats. In ancient Greece the cities would hold male competitions in acrobatics, conjuring, public reciting, blowing the trumpet, and acting out scenes from Homer’s epics, the winners of which would have been praised as virtuous, or “full of manly virtues.” —Merriam-Webster

Those “manly virtues” are fully displayed by violinist Alan Choo, trumpeter Steven Marquardt, and their five male colleagues in “Virtuosity: Fireworks from J.S. Bach,” the latest video from Apollo’s Fire. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Bach’s B-Minor Mass at St. Raphael, Bay Village (Apr. 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

In the third of four back-to-back performances of J.S. Bach’s “Great Catholic Mass” on Sunday afternoon, April 14 in St. Raphael Church in Bay Village, the musicians of Apollo’s Fire showed no signs of fatigue despite heavy physical and musical demands. Led by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell, soloists, chorus, and instrumentalists gave uniformly brilliant performances of a musical monument that the composer was only able to hear in bits and pieces during his lifetime. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: period brass players Steven Marquardt & Todd Williams talk about Bach’s B-Minor Mass

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by Daniel Hathaway

Patrons of Apollo’s Fire and the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival will have the rare experience this weekend of hearing J.S. Bach’s great B-Minor Mass performed locally for the first time on period instruments. Among those will be three natural trumpets and a single natural horn — both played without valves. The distinguished performers will include trumpeter Steven Marquardt and hornist Todd Williams.

Marquardt and his colleagues Perry Sutton and Stanley Curtis will be doing a lot of trumpeting during the Mass. “The Bach is really quite demanding. We play in eleven of the 27 movements, compared to only five in Handel’s Messiah — and two of those are back to back, so it’s more like four,” he said in a telephone conversation.

Williams, on the other hand, will be making a true cameo appearance, playing only in the “Quoniam” of the “Gloria,” an unusual bass aria supported by solo horn and a pair of bassoons. “The ‘Quoniam’ is not as stratospheric as the trumpet parts, though it has its own challenges,” he said in a separate conversation. “You sit there for 45 minutes, then you have to play a very difficult and quite famous solo. It’s sort of a wild movement, with a mood change that’s a bit shocking after what came just before. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Handel’s Messiah at First Baptist, Shaker Hts. (Dec. 1)

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by David Kulma

Performances of Handel’s Messiah are as sure a sign that Christmas time has arrived as lights decorating homes and mailboxes stuffed with holiday sale advertising. So it’s no surprise that the evening of Saturday, December 1 found this reviewer at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights for an absorbing rendition of Handel’s classic oratorio from Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire alongside Apollo’s Singers. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Handel’s Israel in Egypt at First Baptist, Shaker Heights (Oct. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

AF-Closeup-Orch-ChorusAt 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…]

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…]

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