February 2, 2010 - THE PLAIN DEALER
Apollo's Fire Bach program confirms patriach's primacy
by Donald Rosenberg

Enlightenment and entertainment have been key elements for Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, and music director Jeannette Sorrell throughout their 18-year history.

A prime example is “Bach Family Fireworks,” the ensemble’s program this month. Sorrell invited two engaging actors, George Roth and Tom White, to serve as narrative glue during a potpourri of music by Johann Sebastian Bach and sons Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christoph Friedrich. Maybe another title would have been more apt: “Father Knows Best.”

Living with a genius, it seems, can be a challenge. Papa Bach, though conservative in musical style, reached peaks of artistic perfection his sons never approached. This truth was self-evident Friday at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights whenever Apollo’s Fire probed music by J.S., particularly the Violin Concerto in A minor.

The soloist was Julie Andrijeski, who is accomplished both as Baroque violinist and dancer. She didn’t trip the light fantastic here, but she certainly made dramatic passages dance and the slow movement’s transcendent phrases float. Every phrase was imbued with expressive nuance, and Andrijeski and colleagues shaded the music through a spectrum of dynamics.

Sorrell conducted the program from the harpsichord with back to audience, except when she appeared as glistening soloist in back-to-back performances of works by J.S. and W.F.

The latter, the master’s oldest son, was a promising composer but only partly a chip of the old Bach block, as Sorrell made clear in a meandering Fantasia in D minor. The finale from a violin sonata in the same key by J.S. revealed his command of form and rhetoric.

Two younger sons fared better. J.C.F.’s Sinfonia in D minor contains lively thematic discussion, along with a lilting slow movement featuring muted violins and violas. Dramatic and harmonic surprises abound in C.P.E. Bach’s Symphony No. 5 in B minor, with sudden loud chords and stormy gestures to add distinctive personality.

Sorrell and the orchestra gave these works the same crisp focus and flexibility they applied to pieces by J.S. Robust harmonic underpinning was provided by cellist Rene Schiffer, who also shaped a richly dignified account of the Allemande from the Sixth Unaccompanied Cello Suite.

In reconstructive mode, Sorrell tweaked a neglected J.S. Bach concerto for three harpsichords into a version for three violins in D major. The virtuoso delights and lyrical lines were handled with equal aplomb by soloists Olivier Brault, Johanna Novom and Adriane Post.

Amid the Bachian activity, Roth played an exasperated and endearing Johann Sebastian to White’s charming and moody Bach sons. They made topical hay of recent local events with references to a “strike” and “winter residency” and “top 5” orchestra.

At the end, with labor matters settled, the Bachs and Sorrell danced off to South Beach to the tune of the Habanera from “Carmen.” Dipping into Romantic repertoire may be a stretch for a Baroque orchestra, but where the endlessly inventive Apollo’s Fire is concerned, this is Bizet-ness as usual.