Chicago Classical Review

December is an excellent time for concert-going, as most every classical ensemble capitalizes on the bubbling holiday cheer by putting on something tinselly. For many it’s the cash engine that keeps the music flowing the rest of the year. But the downside of December is that it takes place in the winter, when people get sick.

Apollo’s Fire put on its Christmas concert Sunday at the Church of the Holy Family down three ailing soloists. The Cleveland-based baroque ensemble pivoted with aplomb, such that audience members who walked in after the announcement about substitutions might never have known anything wasn’t going according to plan.

Apollo’s Fire is in the midst of a week-plus-weekend of performing the program, titled “Praetorius Christmas Vespers,” eight times across Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. In the impressive printed booklet, artistic director, Jeannette Sorrell, describes rooting around in the archives at Oberlin in 2005 to find baroque Christmas music and emerging with enough to construct a full evening work from the catalog of the 17th-century German composer Michael Praetorius. She ran the Christmastide program from 2005 to 2015 in Cleveland, and is returning to it this year on its 20th anniversary, giving its Chicago premiere.

The structure of the program is like an oratorio. The small period orchestra of strings, brass, winds and a percussionist accompanies vocal soloists both alone and in small groups, along with two choirs. The adult choir, Apollo’s Singers (which is not the Apollo Chorus of Chicago), consisted of 20-ish singers when the soloists joined their ranks. The children’s choir, Apollo’s Musettes, had a dozen or so trebles.

Before intermission, the texts centered on Advent themes, and after, Christmas. Texts were mostly in German, with some in Latin and some in English. Praetorius’s best-known works, the carols “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” and “In Dulci Jubilo,” appeared in the second half.

The concert opened with a welcome and announcement about the substitutions, along with a note that the performers would be masked, presumably that no more musicians would fall ill and jeopardize the six more performances they have scheduled over the next week. Sorrell and all instrumentalists who do not use their mouths to play their instruments were masked. The choir sang masked, taking some brightness out of their sound, but the soloists sang unmasked, sometimes removing them only just before their cues.

From the first chant-like delivery of the melody “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland,” it was clear that the ringing, straight-tone singing style would suit this cathedral-ceilinged space. The singers delivered long lines with a taffy-pulling legato that made the melody bob out of the reverberation, as if playing the church space as another instrument of the ensemble. The solo trio on this opening number of Rebecca Myers, Molly Netter, and Michael Galvin—Galvin performing on two hours’ notice—positively pealed, particularly Myers, who pinpointed the difficult baroque-singing balance between straight tone and full sound.

In the procession of pieces that followed, Apollo’s Fire crackled, with only a few fizzles. The “Wachet auf” setting had some call-and-response between soloists and the choir, but the choir could not muster enough volume for the halves to feel equal, perhaps because of the masking. The Ten Commandments children’s soloists importuned the audience to keep the commandments, maybe a bit underpowered for the space, but in line with the expectations for children.

A few pieces succumbed to the swimmy acoustic. When notes came in quick bunches, either in the orchestra or in melismas for the soloists, the echo swallowed up the definition of the individual notes. The Gloria that ended the first half of the program had an inspiring energy, but felt busy in the room, especially in contrast to the pure vibe of many of the other pieces.

Some of the most goose-bumping moments were the a cappella choral moments. In particular, the Holy Spirit verse of the Credo, the first verse of “Lo, How a Rose,” and the Lord’s Prayer. Call by the soloist and response by the ensemble, as in “In Dulci Jubilo” to close the concert, was inspiring.

The calling card of Apollo’s Fire is its energy. The default posture for baroque performance tends to be staid, middle dynamics, very steady tempos, and muted articulations. Apollo’s Fire rejects all of that. Singers attacked their articulations, tempos veered between sections of the music, and drama reigned throughout. They are above all performers, and given that stance, it’s no surprise that even with three soloists out, the show went on.

The program will be repeated 7 p.m. Monday at the Faith, Hope, and Charity Church in Winnetka. apollosfire.org

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