Apollo 100

Apollo’s Fire has won critical acclaim and enjoyed Top 10 Billboard Classical chart success with their half-dozen releases on AVIE. Returning to their baroque roots, they offer a selection of works by Handel that showcase the Apollo’s Fire chorus. The centerpiece of the album is the grand Dixit Dominus, written during the composer’s early days in Rome. In a gesture to Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee year, Sorrell has chosen two works written for the monarch’s forbearers: the “Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne” and “Zadok the Priest.” As a bonus, Sorrell includes “The Lord Shall Reign” from the epic Israel in Egypt.

The group Apollo's Fire, also known as the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, was founded by its present conductor Jeannette Sorrell. Playing on period instruments, the modestly sized ensemble delves into the later end of the repertoire with this Mozart disc on the Avie album. Sorrell makes the curious choice to open the program with the well-known, powerful Symphony 40 in G minor, a work that concludes with such fervor and drama that it would seem more appropriately placed at the conclusion of the disc. Sorrell's vision for Mozart seems to be one of modest intensity and tempo diversity. Neither of the outer movements are noticeably driven or brisk, and the inner movements are likewise unsurprising in their execution.

The Cleveland-based baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire, with their founder/ director Jeannette Sorrell, has made an indelible impression on the international music market since launching on Avie with recordings of Bach, Mozart and Monteverdi. Vivaldi and Friends is a presentation of concertos by the Red Priest with a twist: two authentic Vivaldi Concertos – one for four violins, the other for two cellos – are interspersed with J. S. Bach’s transcript ion of Vivaldi’s A minor concerto for four harpsichords, and Jeannette Sorrell’s own transcription of ‘Summer’ from the ever-popular Four Seasons. Sorrell’s arrangement mirrors the widespread baroque practice of transcribing violin works for keyboard. In her unique version, she performs the original violin parts on the harpsichord.

Following its successful full length opera, Artaxerxes, Classical Opera return with the first in an epic series of Mozart operas, Apollo et Hyacinthus. Named in The Guardian as one of ‘The Best Classical albums of 2012’. Classical Opera has mounted two staged productions of Mozart’s Apollo et Hyacinthus (1998 and 2006), with both receiving wide critical acclaim; The Independent stated, “Classical Opera’s polished debut in Apollo et Hyacinthus proved a pearl beyond price. Here was a work of staggering beauty riddled with sweet noises like Caliban’s enchanted isle.”