Christmas Vespers With Apollo's Fire

Summary:

Advent and Vespers music by Michael Praetorius

Website:

http://www.apollosfire.org/

Additional Credits and Funding:

Produced by WKSU, Kent Ohio.

Timely on:

December: Christmas Season

Tones:

Engaging, Surprising

Language:

English

Description:

Apollo's Fire gives a rousing, vital performance of music that the early 17th century German composer Michael Praetorius might have used at Lutheran services for Advent and Christmas Day Vespers. The concert features a "big band" of strings, winds, children's and adult's voices, and period brass including sackbuts, trumpets, and cornetti.

Included are settings of familiar chorales such as In Dulci Jubilo, Nun komm der Heiden Heiland and Joseph Lieber Joseph Mein; and such beloved Praetorius compositions as Puer Natus in Bethlehem and Lo How a Rose.

The Boston Globe says that Apollo's Fire, Cleveland's Baroque Orchestra, is "one of America's leading Baroque orchestras, capable of competing with Europe's much-recorded bands." Apollo's Fire presents concerts that speak to modern audiences through historically informed performance. The ensemble's name represents the classical god of music and the sun.

Their director, Jeanette Sorrell, is part of the new and fearless generation of early music conductors. After studying harpsichord with Gustav Leonhard and conducting with Roger Norrington and Leonard Bernstein, she formed Apollo's Fire in 1992.

The program is formatted so that it may be run as a 1:59 unit or divided into two standalone programs, a 1:29 unit and a :29 unit.

The first 1:29 comprises the Christmas Vespers concert, recorded in 2005. The remaining half-hour is music drawn from Apollo's Fire's 1998 "Noels and Carols from the Old World" concert. Both programs were recorded at St Paul's Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

For the 1:59 format, two cutaways are provided.

The program is approximately 92% music.

These are live concert recordings. The material performed in these concerts has been released on CD, but the CD recordings were made in sessions rather than before an audience.

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