by Daniel Hathaway
Whatever happened to the siblings of famous musicians?
That’s a particularly interesting question in the case of Marianne Mozart, Wolfgang Amadé’s beloved sister, nicknamed Nannerl, who in her youth was highly regarded as a pianist and composer, but whose works have completely disappeared.
On March 22 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Les Délices honored the music of Mozart’s sister in its absence with a fascinating recital of music by women composers from her era performed by fortepianist Mark Edwards and violinist Shelby Yamin.
Edwards is a celebrated harpsichordist and organist on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory, but this performance marked his public debut as a fortepianist, as well as his inaugural appearance as a duo with Yamin.
In the 1670s, Louis XIV commissioned a series of 39 fountains for the Gardens of Versailles, each modeled on a story from Aesop’s Fables and intended for the education of the king’s young son, the Dauphin.
This isn’t the first time Les Délices has brought puppets to the party. Following up on their 2022 Baroque opera The White Cat, the ensemble will present The Aesop Project in Cleveland and Akron on November 22.
Although Les Délices’ most recent subscription program actually featured music by composers from what is now the western part of the Czech Republic, it borrowed its marketing title from an American rock anthem and culminated in a major work by a celebrated Austrian.
