Musical groups caught up in period instruments and the Baroque era can, and often do, give what is called a “highly informed performance” (or, as it can affectionately also be called, HIP). That’s how Apollo’s Fire, a Knight Arts grantee, comes across – as hip.

Apollo’s Fire is truly onto something, especially in their research-based love of the baroque. For one thing, they know their instruments, having as many in the field have done, rediscovered or rebuilt instruments like those of the era, some of which had been abandoned for more than 100 years. And they know how to play them, like the baroque violin (coming from the viol of the period), which, because of the way it was constructed and strung, calls for the player to sway the body for various tones and colors of the instrument.

The group also has gotten onto the ways performances were done and the orchestration of the era. Compositions weren’t done with mega-choruses and huge orchestras in mind. That’s not to say, one hears, that the Baroque period wasn’t concerned with bigger and louder, and showier, for there seemingly is indication that they were expanding beyond the small chamber groups that preceded them.

Apollo’s Fire. Photo from irom.wordpress.com

Maybe, just maybe, that kind of thing crept into the idea for the name of the upcoming Apollo’s Fire – the “Virtuoso Orchestra.” But, if not, it also has to do with three of the works that are being performed – make that where and by whom they were done as well. In this performance, the group will play what the press release calls “colorful Dresden concertos” written by Johann David Heinichen. The works were written for the famous virtuoso orchestra of that city’s palace. Apollo’s Fire will do his Concerto Grosso in G and his Concerto Grosso in C.

Johann Sebastian Bach won’t be forgotten either. The musical group will perform three works by this probably most well know composer (he is one of the three B’s after all). Apollo’s Fire will do his Harpsichord Prelude in G, his Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor, and Brandenburg Concerto No. 4.

Additional pieces will be by Georg Telemann and Antonio Vivaldi – an Allegro from Concerto in D for Two Flutes, Violin, and Cello by Telemann and Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins in B Minor.

Apollo’s  Fire will  present its “Virtuoso Orchestra” at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 10 in First United Methodist Church, 253 E. Mill St., Akron; 800-314-2535; www.apollosfire.org. Tickets are $20-$70.