Apollo’s Fire @ Severance Hall, 3/13

Cleveland Baroque Orchestra itself.  Founder Jeannette Sorrell led an

expanded orchestra on the (much bigger than usual for the ensemble)

stage of Severance Hall. All played splendidly, bringing the large

audience the sumptuous musical delights we’ve come to expect. (Still

[my only quibble], Apollo’s Fire rocks even more when it plays in the

smaller church venues created to amplify every exquisite musical and

sonic gesture.)

Pianist Sergei Babayan was to have played a period instrument (alas,

our weather made it sick), but made do with a Steinway concert grand

which surrendered voluptuously to gesture and pause (something the

older instrument likely could not have done anyway) in Mozart’s Piano

Concerto No. 24 in c minor, K. 491.  The orchestra also bounced

happily through Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 (nicknamed “Haffner”). Ballet

music from Mozart’s opera “Idomeneo” wove a special brand of

enchantment as dancers Carlos Fittante and Robin Gilbert showed how

gestures and movement can make for compelling (and musical)

story-telling.

Apollo’s Fire movers and shakers continued the celebration in a small

post-concert reception where the ensemble announced an upcoming season

that includes its first concert tour in Europe (in November). It’s

about time more of the world can have a chance to see what delights

abound in Cleveland–the surprise hotbed of Baroque music (Apollo’s

Fire; Chapel, Court and Countryside series at Case Western, the annual

Bach Festival at Baldwin-Wallace, etc. etc. etc. times 10!).

Laura Kennelly is a freelance arts journalist, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America, and an associate editor of BACH, a scholarly journal devoted to J. S. Bach and his circle.

Listening to and learning more about music has been a life-long passion. She knows there’s no better place to do that than the Cleveland area.

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