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7:30 PM TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2018
MARTIN THEATRE
APOLLO’S FIRE
THE CLEVELAND BAROQUE ORCHESTRA
JEANNETTE SORRELL,
music director
“A Night at Bach’s Coffeehouse”
TELEMANN
Selections from
Don Quixote
Suite
Overture
Don Quixote Awakens
His Attack on the Windmills
His Sighs of Love for the Princess Dulcinea
Sancho Panza Tricked
Don Quixote Asleep
BACH
Selections from Orchestral Suite No.
Polonaise
Menuet
Badinerie
Kathie Stewart,
traverso
BACH
Concerto for Two Violins
Vivace
Largo, non tanto
Allegro
Olivier Brault and Adriane Post,
violins
–
–
BACH
Brandenburg Concerto No.
[Allegro]
A ettuoso
Allegro
Jeannette Sorrell,
harpsichord
;
Kathie Stewart,
traverso
;
Olivier Brault,
violin
VIVALDI
Concerto for Four Violins in B minor
(arr. Sorrell)
Allegro
Largo
Larghetto—Adagio—Largo—Allegro
Susanna Perry Gilmore, Johanna Novom, Adriane Post, Andrew Fouts,
violins
Ravinia expresses its appreciation for the generous support of Sponsor
Sue and Tom Pick
and additional support from the
Paul M. Angell Family Foundation
.
A COFFEEHOUSE JAM-SESSION
As cantor of the
omasschule in Leipzig,
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
had a di cult life. In charge of the music for all
of the town’s principal churches, his duties in-
cluded composing new cantatas virtually every
week, engaging and rehearsing musicians to per-
form the cantatas (a di culty due to the shortage
of freelance musicians), and teaching the boys of
the
omasschule every day. Such a workload
would no doubt have been joyously stimulat-
ing to a man of Bach’s genius, were it not for the
hostile work environment. From
onward,
Bach’s relationship with Leipzig’s town council
became a constant litany of arguments and criti-
cism. Several years later, forbidden to perform a
Passion for Good Friday, Bach noted bitterly that
it would have been “just a burden anyway.”
Against this backdrop of con ict, it is not sur-
prising that Bach enjoyed letting his hair down
in the lively atmosphere of Zimmermann’s Cof-
feehouse, a sort of Starbucks of th-century
Leipzig. Gottfried Zimmermann, a middle-class
entrepreneur, sponsored casual weekly concerts
in his co eehouse in the Katherstrasse. In the
summer, the concerts were held outdoors in the
“co ee garden.” e main attraction of the con-
certs was the Collegium Musicum, the informal
student orchestra of the University of Leipzig.
Bach became its director in
, and quickly
began focusing his compositional energy on the
orchestra at the expense of his church work. Per-
haps the Collegium was just more fun than his
laborious church duties? In any case, he set to
work creating concertos that could be played by
himself, his sons, and his friends with the Colle-
gium Musicum.
e Collegium Musicum had been founded
years earlier by a lively and popular law stu-
dent named
GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN
(1681–1767)
. But Telemann had since gone on
to greater things: he had become music director
for the wealthy city of Hamburg. (He had also
been chosen over Bach for the music director
post in Leipzig, but he declined the o er, and
the post eventually went to Bach a er it was
also declined by Graupner and Fasch.) Bach and
Johann Georg Schreiber’s copper engraving of
Zimmermann’s Coffeehouse, the narrow corner
building in the center with two awnings (1720)
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