Thu 2/4-Sun 2/7
Apollo’s Fire reprised the deservedly popular “Sephardic Journey: Wanderings of the Spanish Jews” in four area appearances this past week. The last, a captivating performance Sun 2/7 at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, was followed by a welcome touch — hot cider and burmuelos, aka little donuts (Great! We were famished after our journey through the desert).
The program, about a wish for Jerusalem (that is, a need for home, a place to belong and a holy transformation), followed closely the one presented in 2014, as once againconductor Jeannette Sorrell led us to consider the music that helped to sustain a people.
After a dramatic entrance created by voices and violins moving down the auditorium aisles, the ensemble continued onstage with a mixture of vocalists and instrumentalists who wove a sonic evocation of worship, love, holy days, feasting and celebration. While it happened to be too dark where I sat to read the extensive program notes (that’s all right, something to take home and enjoy), it turned out to be a good thing: I just sat back and let the music wash over me.
With a touch of music theater, soprano Nell Snaidas, tenor Karim Sulayman and baritone Jeffrey Strauss created “mini-plays,” assuming roles both religious and secular that moved seamlessly from one to the other. Why? As Sorrell notes in the program, “The spiritual longing for the homeland is a unique and distinctive focus of Jewish artistic culture…[with an] interweaving of the spiritual and the secular in the fabric of daily Jewish life [that] makes it impossible to separate ‘secular’ Jewish folk music from the ‘sacred’ songs of the synagogue. They are simply different expressions of the same spiritual longing and love.”
It was striking to watch the dozen or so singers and the instrumentalists interact and seemingly enjoy each other’s performances as well as their own. With their help, the mix of Hebrew prayers with Ladino love songs, Turkish contributions, and even Italian baroque (thanks to Salamone Rossi) seemed somehow to fit together in celebration of a rich heritage, a heritage now shared beautifully by Apollo’s Fire.
It’s delightful that this outstanding ensemble shifts venues to different parts of the Cleveland area because everyone (I think) should get a chance to see how Apollo’s Fire brings life to works created eons ago, works that deserve to live far beyond their own historical period. Take a look at Apollo’s Fire in action as they present the first section of “Sephardic Journey” on YouTube.
BOTTOM LINE: Never again even think that “classical music” is boring. It never is if it’s done as well as Apollo’s Fire does it.
[Review by Laura Kennelly]Berea, OH 44017