On Thursday, October 12th, the superb ensemble of soloists, Apollo’s Fire, opened its 32nd season with “Splendour in London” in Akron’s stunning St. Paul’s church.
This program of celebration, featuring repertoire by Handel and Purcell, presented music from a time of darkness in Europe, which is particularly prescient for today, with modern wars raging on two continents. The darkness of Europe’s Thirty Years War saw the 17th century’s population celebrating ordinary festive occasions as well as the funeral of its Queen Mary.
In the first half, Sorrell included music from Purcell’s tragic opera Dido & Aeneas, sung by Akron’s own Ashlee Foreman and the great Dutch soprano Josefien Stoppelenburg, who gave the most original and compelling rendering of “Dido’s Lament” these reviewers have ever heard. Jeanette Sorrell’s choice of repertoire — celebratory mixed with funereal, gave us the spirit, not only of the times, but of the people.
The program started with music from festival celebrations to funeral laments and ended with a second half of dances. The sound of this ensemble demonstrates a clarity and purity that is not only appropriate to the time period of its repertoire, but is ravishing in its own right. Every musician in the orchestra and chorus is solo quality, but nonetheless plays with an attention and blend that creates a distinctive and stunning ensemble sound. The trumpet and horn players in Handel’s hornpipes were especially astonishing. Horns are difficult instruments at the best of times, but Baroque horns take particular skill because they do not use keys. Horn players Sara Cyrus and Alexandra Cook and trumpeters Steven Marquardt, Perry Sutton and Ryan Berndt exhibited a virtuosity that was exhilarating.
Sorrell is one of the few music directors who choreographs her concerts. The processional entry and exit of the singers accompanied by drummer Matthew Bassett on the tabor — a drum reminiscent of the Revolutionary War — gave a dramatic quality that set the mood for the entire concert. The playfulness of Sorrell’s choreography was especially appropriate in the first piece on the second half, Purcell’s “Come Away Fellow Sailors.” Tenor Jacob Perry’s singing was wonderfully alive, limber and flexible, while the frolicking of his colleagues lent a vibrancy not only to that particular piece but to the entire concert. The exuberance of Handel’s Water Music lifted the spirits of Akron’s ardent Apollo’s Fire fans so that the white Romanesque arches in St. Paul’s rang not only with the music of Purcell and Handel, but with the spirit of a concert deeply appreciated and moving.
Apollo’s Fire’s next performance of Handel’s Israel in Egypt is at CIM for one night only Saturday, October 21, at 8 pm, before the orchestra takes it to New York’s Lincoln Center on October 25th and 26th.
[Written by Lisa DeBenedicis and Tricia Hammann]