CLEVELAND, Ohio - The program title could not have been more accurate. The performances of Bach by Apollo's Fire Friday were "Virtuoso" and then some.

And yet they made it look easy. So much fun did the musicians appear to have playing Bach showpieces for a nearly full St. Paul's Episcopal Church with director Jeannette Sorrell, one suspects most didn't even view the evening as work.

REVIEW

Apollo's Fire

What: Jeannette Sorrell conducts 'Virtuoso Bach'

When: 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 20.

Where: Bath Church United Church of Christ, 3980 W. Bath Rd., Akron.

Tickets: $22-$70. Go to apollosfire.org or call 216-320-0012.

Not that anyone took it lightly, of course. On the contrary. That's the magic of virtuosity: it only looks easy.

Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 1 surely demanded the group's full attention. Out of a relatively bare-bones score the artists fashioned a living, breathing entity, a collection of dance movements diverse in style and meter but united in shapeliness, flexibility, and balance.

Ditto Bach's Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 and 4. In the accomplished hands of Apollo's Fire, the two staples of their repertoire sounded utterly fresh and vivacious, free of any and all constraint. Anything but stale or routine.

The soloists in Concerto No. 4 were particularly dashing. Rather than seek or hog the limelight, concertmaster Olivier Brault and recorder players Kathie Stewart and Francis Colpron simply engaged each other and their peers in seamless, expressive conversation.

Stewart and Colpron were also two of the driving forces in two movements from Telemann's Concerto Grosso in B Minor. Playing traverse flute along with the ever-suave cellist Rene Schiffer, the artists demonstrated technical virtuosity of the highest order, even as Telemann's music paled in terms of inspiration next to Bach's.

No paling next to anyone for oboist Debra Nagy, the soloist in an oboe transcription of Bach's G-Minor Keyboard Concerto. Talk about virtuoso. Like her colleagues in other works Friday, the founder of Les Delices revitalized her music, preserving its fire and rhythmic zest while also softening some of its hardest edges.

One especially heavenly highlight: the Largo. Through the prism of Nagy's oboe, that famous movement managed to stop time once again, to hold listeners in a state of pure bliss. Thank you, Bach. Thank you, Apollo's Fire.

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