by Daniel Hathaway
At the top of their program at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, October 24, Apollo’s Fire founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell told the full house that the Baroque orchestra was opening its 30th season with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons rediscovered, returning to a piece that the ensemble has featured every year since 1991.
It might seem that there’s not a lot left to discover after three decades of experience with the Red Priest’s charming and evocative score, but this performance boasted a secret weapon: the young Spanish violinist Francisco Fullana, now the Orchestra’s artist-in-residence, whose affecting personality and easy virtuosity raised the solo part a quantum leap above the merely extraordinary. [Read more…]
With each of its themed programs, Apollo’s Fire is becoming more than just a period instrument ensemble that gives concerts. Its March program, “Tapestry — Jewish Ghettos of Baroque Italy,” which replaces performances of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, finds Jeannette Sorrell and her colleagues moving seamlessly out of their usual roles to morph into singing actors and dancers, all in order to bring the subject at hand to vibrant life.
