Reviewed by Laura Kennelly
“We want to shake the dust off it [Bach’s music] and play it with the instruments it was created for and to make it a conversation among friends” — that’s pretty much what conductor and director Jeannette Sorrell said before Thursday night’s (basically) Bach concert in the beautiful St. Ignatius High School’s Breen Center for the Performing Arts in Ohio City. And that’s exactly what the talented ensemble did as they played a selection of the eighteenth-century master’s concertos with their usual brilliance and verve.
The concert opened with what may be the most well-known of the Brandenburg Concertos, No. 3 in G Major, BWV 1048. It sounded brighter and faster than this excellent version previously recorded by the ensemble. That impression might be because the hall bounced everything off and into my ears right away–at any rate, the musicians swayed, exchanged looks, and (yes) bounced to make it a most engaging conversation indeed. Olivier Brault and Johanna Novom followed this work with a sweepingly charming (and a bit melancholy) tete-a-tete with Bach’s [non-Brandenburg] Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043.
The viola, often overlooked in favor of the showy violin, shone out in viola-wielding Karina Fox and Kristen Linfante’s interpretation of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flat Major, BWV 1051. The program concluded with the Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major as set off by virtuoso recorder playing (recorders? Yes! and they were nothing like the plastic ones we played in elementary school). Francis Colpron’s and Kathie Stewart’s lovely instruments (they seemed to be made of wood) sounded out joyfully alongside Olivier Brault’s violin.
For an encore the whole ensemble returned to the stage for a quick and jolly rendition of a Teleman work.
One wonderful discovery of the evening (Apollo’s Fire’s brilliance is already well-known and they did not disappoint) was just what a great venue to Breen Center is. Intimate, good acoustics, theatre seating (all good), convenient parking right next to it makes it a terrific venue that deserves a better turnout than we saw Thursday.
I attended the show on 4/26/12.
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.