United States ‘¡Hispania!: Tangos y Fandangos’: Alan Choo, Emi Tanabe (violins), Jeremías García (guitar), René Schiffer, Rebecca Landell (violas da gamba), Apollo’s Fire / Jeannette Sorrell (conductor). Avon Lake United Church of Christ, Avon Lake, Ohio, 6.9.2025. (MSJ)
For the first of two Countryside Concert series scheduled for this summer in northeast Ohio, Apollo’s Fire music director Jeannette Sorrell has revamped last year’s ¡Hispania! program. This is actually the second revamping: the first focused it as a vocal program, which the ensemble toured to Puerto Rico. This version is an instrumental one that looks at how Hispanic traditions (as reflected in Italian music too) carried over to the New World.
But beyond any given theme for a concert, what Apollo’s Fire is always about is relationships. Music is only theoretical until someone gives it voice, and one of Sorrell’s many gifts is the alchemy of personalities. She finds not only individual performers but, specifically, performers who can interact with others in ways that increase their impact exponentially. The first dynamic duo of this concert was the pairing of concertmaster Alan Choo with violinist Emi Tanabe. Since Choo joined the ensemble, this pairing has emerged as an outstanding one. The two violinists subtly play off each other while the differences between them remain clear: Choo, theatrical, with a golden tone to his playing, and Tanabe, selflessly possessed with the music but with a silvery tone. Between them, they seem to cast a net capable of picking up almost every nuance imaginable, whether in the lyrical Catalan ‘Song of the Birds’ that opened the concert or in the fiery tarantella that closed the first half.
Another such pair was flamenco guitarist Jeremías García and percussionist Anthony Taddeo. Whether they sat side-by-side or were some distance apart on the stage, the two relished the rhythmic soul of so much of this music, provoking each other onward with hyperattentive listening and response. Tárrega’s ‘Capricho Árabe’ was thrilling and García’s own ‘Tarantas’ was spellbinding. An unexpected delight was Albeniz’s famous ‘Asturias (Leyenda)’, a late-1800s work outside the ensemble’s regular pathways but perfectly placed here. Under Sorrell’s deft hand, the ensemble played with great intensity in the orchestration by Garcia without loud volume which could have drowned out the voice of García’s guitar. Instead, it proceeded with delicacy, only occasionally punching the volume though with a continuous feel of racehorses held back.
The less ancient selections formed a perfect bridge to René Duchiffre’s ‘Tango Concerto’ (or at least most of it). The work was written by Apollo’s Fire’s principal cellist (and pillar of the ensemble) René Schiffer (Duchiffre is his publishing pen name). His aim was to prove that a pair of violas da gamba could actually carry a full concerto instead of being pushed into the background as Bach dismissively does in his Brandenburg Concerto No.6. The full work, which has been recorded by the ensemble, includes a motoric concertato first movement which ties it more specifically to the Baroque concerto grosso form. Here, shorn of that movement, the work dramatically and effectively ramps up into the finale which, instead of using a Baroque dance form, takes its inspiration from the Argentinian tango. Schiffer and Rebecca Landell proved yet another dynamic duo, playing off each other with virtuosity and humor and bringing the concert to a vibrant close.
Perhaps the best duo of all is this ensemble and its audience, which gets to enjoy the return of interesting programs yet finds them improved and transformed as quality curated events. This concert proved no exception, with the audience beginning loud cheers before the last notes faded.
Mark Sebastian Jordan
Featured Image: Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire in ¡Hispania! © Apollo’s Fire
Traditional Catalan (arr. Sorrell) – ‘El Cant des Ocells’
Diego Ortiz – Two Recercadas
Martin Y Coll – ‘Danza del Acha’
Andrea Falconieri – ‘Folias d’Espagna’
Traditional Southern Italian (arr. Sorrell) – Two Tarantellas
Gaspar Sanz – ‘Marizápalos’
Santiago de Murcia (arr. Sorrell) – ‘Gaitas’, Fandango
Traditional Mexican (arr. Sorrell) – ‘Xacara’
Jeremías García – ‘Tarantas’
Francisco Tarrega (arr. García) – ‘Capricho Árabe’
Isaac Albéniz (orch./arr. García) – ‘Asturias (Leyenda)’
René Duchiffre – Concerto in D minor for Two Violas da Gamba, ‘Tango’