October 3, 2009 - THE PLAIN DEALER
Apollo's Fire opens 18th season on heavenly notes
by Donald Rosenberg

Leave it to Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, to open a season in a blaze of glory. Make that Gloria. Come to think of it, make it both.

Music director Jeannette Sorrell had a smart idea for the first program of her ensemble’s 18th season: sacred choral works by Vivaldi and Bach that include the texts “Glory be to God on high” (“Gloria in excelsis Deo,” in the original Latin).

The orchestra’s concert Friday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights was another example of the heightened musical sensibilities that Sorrell and company pour into their Baroque duties. Vivaldi’s Gloria and highlights from Bach’s B Minor Mass were preceded by two curtain raisers devised in whole or in part by an arranger named Sorrell.

The lights dimmed as the conductor led an invocation, “Gloria Patri,” that she devised to make a connection to the Pieta, the orphanage in Venice where Vivaldi taught music to girls and women. Sorrell’s version, with nods to Monteverdi, is a plainchant of haunting beauty.

Apollo’s Musettes, five teenaged girls led by silken-voiced Madeline Healey, sang the chant with the shimmering assistance of the orchestra’s inspired chorus, Apollo’s Singers, arrayed along the sides of the church.

An unfinished violin concerto by Bach, Sinfonia-Konzertsatz in D major, BWV 1045, also had a touch of Sorrell, who completed the ending in a flourish of Bach-like radiance. The soloist, Julie Andrijeski, managed the virtuoso demands as if they were the friendliest of encounters.

When it came time for Vivaldi’s Gloria to reveal its seemingly familiar self, Sorrell made sure that the score would stand and deliver. Several tempos took off with explosive fervor, though instrumental voices and texts remained articulate. In the darkly mesmerizing “Et in terra pax,” the chorus leaned into dissonances and the orchestra held onto lines with fierce tension.

The vocal soloists were alive to the poetry and vivacity in Vivaldi’s writing. Sandra Simon used her bright soprano to glowing effect in tandem with Alex Klein’s eloquent oboe. Mezzo-soprano Meg Bragle demonstrated her Baroque versatility paired with Rene Schiffer’s jaunty cello and on her own agile journey.

Bach fared equally well, if in severely abbreviated fashion. The composer’s complete, sublime B Minor Mass usually takes up an entire program, but finances dictated that Apollo’s Fire offer only selections from Parts I and II.

What was there was magnificent. Sorrell, often leading from the harpsichord, imbued every moment with apt expressive intensity or buoyancy, and balances between voices and instruments were ideal. Simon and Bragle once again were lustrous soloists, with superior help from oboe d’amore player Lani Spahr, a trio of gleaming trumpets and Apollonian colleagues.

The performance paved the way for the day when these artists tackle a full B Minor Mass. Just think of the glory.