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Classical-music review: Sorrell,SPCO have a baroque blasttogether

By ROB HUBBARD | Special to the Pioneer PressPUBLISHED: April 7, 2017 at 12:08 am | UPDATED: April 7, 2017 at 9:20 am

Harpsichordist and conductor Jeannette Sorrell leads the St. Paul ChamberOrchestra in an all-baroque program this weekend. (Photo: Roger Mastroianni)

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The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is getting back to Bach.

Granted, you’ll usually find a fair amount of J.S. Bach and his baroque-era

contemporaries over the course of an SPCO concert season. But Englishman

Jonathan Cohen recently became the orchestra’s first baroque-specialist artistic

partner since Nicholas McGegan’s 2009 departure.

And other masters of the style have been paying more frequent visits, such as the

Academy of Ancient Music’s Richard Egarr and the Gabrieli Consort’s Paul McCreesh.

But none has summoned up as much energy, enthusiasm and excitement from the

orchestra as conductor and harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell. The leader of Cleveland

baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire made her SPCO debut on Thursday evening at

Minneapolis’ Temple Israel, and it proved an extraordinarily passionate performance.

There was a lot of bounce in the Bach, vivacity in the Vivaldi and je ne sais quoi in the

Jean-Philippe Rameau. While I’ve experienced some outstanding performances of

baroque music by the SPCO, I don’t believe I’ve seen them having quite so much fun

with the repertoire.

Yet you can’t attribute that entirely to Sorrell’s leadership, for she has a team of

spirited collaborators from inside the SPCO. One standout was violinist Francisco

Fullana, who recently assumed the ambiguous title of “principal violinist” with the

orchestra (evidently it’s something between concertmaster and principal second

violinist).

Fullana shared soloing duties with Nina Tso-Ning Fan on a thrilling Bach “Double”

Violin Concerto and was catapulting himself out of the concertmaster’s chair all

evening, closing the evening with some inspired improvisations on Vivaldi’s “La

follia.”

Fullana and Fan’s “Bach Double” proved to be such a success that a Vivaldi Concerto

for Two Cellos felt cast into eclipse despite fine playing by soloists Joshua

Koestenbaum and Sarah Lewis. It’s a work with frequent echoes of “Summer” from

the same composer’s “Four Seasons,” full of scurrying phrases and threatening

storms.


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Tags: Music

IF YOU GO

From the concert’s opening downbeat, Sorrell was a very engaging conductor,

gracefully offering clear direction yet eschewing a rigid allegiance to structure in

favor of a free and passionate feel. And there was passion aplenty. Seldom will you

hear the opening Overture of Bach’s First Orchestral Suite sounding so effervescent,

the ensuing dances given such a sense of abandon.

Excerpts from operas by Rameau and George Frideric Handel proved exhilarating,

but the evening’s most memorable performance came on the finale, as Sorrell’s

orchestral adaptation of Vivaldi’s “La Follia” Sonata became a baroque jam session, a

repeating vamp providing the foundation for solos breaking out all over the

orchestra, musicians changing up the moods with evident improvisations and

leading the music onward in unexpected directions.

While others will be performing baroque music with the SPCO before season’s end,

Sorrell’s thrill-a-minute approach has set a pretty high bar for them.

Who: The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra with conductor and harpsichordist Jeannette

Sorrell

What: Works by George Frideric Handel, J.S. Bach, Antonio Vivaldi and

Jean-Philippe Rameau

When and where: 8 p.m. Friday, Wayzata Community Church, 125 Wayzata Blvd. E.,

Wayzata; 8 p.m. Saturday, St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, 900 Summit Ave., St.

Paul; 2 p.m. Sunday, Benson Great Hall, 3900 Bethel Drive, Arden Hills

Tickets: $27-$10 (students free), available at 651-291-1144 or thespco.org

Capsule: Making baroque music fun again.

Rob Hubbard


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