October 5, 2009 - CLEVELANDCLASSICAL.COM
Apollo's Fire: One and a half 'Glorias' and three trumpets
by William Fazekas

Jeanette Sorrell is both a scholarly musicologist and a consummate musician. This past weekend, She could easily have presented an erudite paper, titled something along the lines of “The influence of Venetian church music on the choral style of J. S. Bach”; instead, Ms. Sorrell lead her period-performance orchestra and chorus Apollo’s Fire in a stunning series of concerts pairing Antonio Vivaldi’s well-known setting of the 'Gloria' (RV 589) with selections from the first section (Kyrie and Gloria) of the 'Mass in B minor' by J. S. Bach: a “Gloria and a half”, as it were. We heard the performance on Saturday, Oct. 3rd at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights.

Both works had become standard repertoire before the “period-performance” achieved popularity (in the 1970’s), and have been performed and recorded by both modern and baroque orchestras. Without hitting us over the head with them, the parallels between the two works are obvious: although the Bach Mass opens in his favorite key of B minor, much of the Gloria is, like Vivaldi’s setting, in the related key of D major — hardly a surprise, since that was the preferred key for the bright, valveless trumpets of the baroque, and each work employs three of them (with timpani, the usual complement for festive pieces in the 18th c.). Each features, in addition to the chorus, solo arias and duets by a soprano (here, Sandra Simon, who often sings with Apollo’s Fire), and mezzo-soprano (Meg Bragle). Indeed, both feature an aria for mezzo-soprano with the mellow-toned baroque oboe d’amore.

The Vivaldi setting is by far the shorter and simpler of the two compositions. Much of it is infused with Vivaldi’s typically zesty string writing, especially during the sections for full chorus; while the solo arias have a rather Handelian emphasis on vocal lyricism. This was underscored by Ms. Sorrell’s conducting techniques: She conducted the arias seated at the harpsichord and playing continuo, and the movements for full ensemble standing and with a baton, while the continuo was provided by organist Peter Bennett on a portative. The performance had fire and drive throughout, the passages with brass had a brilliant, shimmering quality, and precise attacks and cutoffs by all performers imbued rests with as much energy as notes.

That J. S. Bach was familiar with and impressed by the music of Vivaldi is a well-known fact; still, in the music of Bach baroque proportions are stretched to the extreme. The 'B-minor Mass' is a sprawling work, a compendium of Bach’s choral and vocal writing styles. It was compiled over several years, not written as a cycle, and never intended as for liturgical use, certainly not in Lutheran Germany. Therefore, it did the work no disservice to present mere sections of it. Ms. Sorrell chose the three movements of the 'Kyrie' and first four from the 'Gloria', as well as the aria 'Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris' and the concluding chorus 'Cum sancto spiritu'.

This is Big Music, and it takes skillful performers under a masterful conductor to give shape and direction to the long choral fugues in the two settings of 'Kyrie eleison' and that of 'Cum sancto spiritu', but that’s exactly what Ms. Sorrell and her group did. Particularly memorable were the duet for Ms. Simon and Ms. Bragle in 'Christe eleison', the majestic swelling chorus at 'Gratias agimus tibi', and Ms. Bragle’s breathtaking vocal control at the beginning of 'Qui sedes ad dexteram patris' (with the accompanying oboe d’amore part performed not, as the program listed, by Alex Klein, but by the second chair player, Lani Spahr. Mr. Klein did play the oboe d’amore solo in the Vivaldi.)

That Ms. Sorrell is a music director with a meticulous attention to detail should be apparent by this time. So it should come as no surprise that under her direction the chorus should sing the same Latin text with different, but appropriate, pronunciations in the two works -- Traditional Italian in the Vivaldi (“benedichimus”, “ajigmus”), and German in the Bach (‘beneditsimus”, ‘aghimus”). As one of the choristers afterwards remarked, that one could tell the difference was a testament to their diction.

In addition to her hats as Scholar and Conductor, Ms. Sorrell occasionally also wears that of Composer/Arranger, and that she displayed in the works that opened the concert. An “Invocation” setting of the doxology text “Gloria Patri et Filio”, based on plainchant and arranged by Ms. Sorrell, was an imagining of “how the ‘Gloria Patri’ might have been sung at the Pietà [the orphanage/boarding school for girls at which Vivaldi taught] in the Late 17th century”. As such it was unconvincing, but as a piece of 21st century mystical theatricality (à la John Tavener) it was quite lovely.

More successful was Bach's 'Sinfonia-Konzertsatz' (BWV 1045), for violin solo, three trumpets, and orchestra. Known from an incomplete manuscript, it was provided with an ending by Ms. Sorrell. The virtuoso solo part was played with awe-inspiring athleticism by Julie Andrijeski, while Ms. Sorrell performed the almost as amazing feat of effectively balancing three trumpets against a solo string player.