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Les Délices to revive Louis XIV’s oboe bands in concerts this weekend

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by Mike Telin

Royal-Wind-Band-Coronation-Louis-XVOver the past five seasons, the Cleveland-based baroque ensemble Les Délices has often treated audiences to concerts that highlight the refined music from the Royal Court of King Louis XIV. This weekend the ensemble presents two concerts that feature another side of the music from that court with “The Musketeers,” a colorful program featuring baroque oboes, bassoon, baroque guitar, theorbo, and percussion inspired by Louis XIV’s oboe band, Les Mousquetaire.

On Saturday, October 25 at 8:00 pm at The Bop Stop and on Sunday, October 26 at 4:00 pm in the Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church, Les Délices artist director Debra Nagy will be joined by her baroque oboe colleagues Stephen Bard and Kathryn Montoya, baroque bassoonist Anna Marsh, percussionist Michelle Humphreys, and guitarist and theorboist, Simon Martyn-Ellis, in performances of music by Lully, Hotteterre, Philidor and others. [Read more…]

Review: “The Leading Man” with Jason McStoots and Les Délices

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by Timothy Robson

LD BannerThrough a combination of scheduling conflicts and the sin of sloth, I had never heard a performance by the highly regarded Cleveland Baroque ensemble Les Délices until Sunday afternoon May 4, in the Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church, Shaker Heights. Les Délices are artists in residence at the church, so this was home base, although they regularly perform in other venues around town. The evening before they had presented this program, “The Leading Man,” at the William Busta Gallery. These concerts ended their 2014/15 series, and the Sunday afternoon concert was, with a couple of niggling reservations – more about them later – an unalloyed pleasure.

Boston-based tenor Jason McStoots was the featured soloist in a program of excerpts from 18th century French operas (all written in the span of four years from 1745-1748), with an added set from Jean-Baptiste Lully’s 1684 opera Amadis. Each set included one or two vocal selections, plus instrumental movements to put the airs and recitatives into context. Oboist Deborah Nagy, leader of Les Délices, gave remarks about the operas and music preceding each set to the nearly-full house. [Read more…]

Preview: Les Délices — Jason McStoots to play Pierre Jélyotte in “The Leading Man”

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by Mike Telin

McStoots-Jason-BEMF-OrfeoInspired by one of the 18th century’s most famous tenors, Pierre Jélyotte, Les Délices’s new program The Leading Man includes operatic excerpts of musical heroism, absurdist comedy, and ravishing beautythat were central to Jélyotte’s repertoire. In her program notes, Les Délices’s founder and director Debra Nagy writes: “Jelyotte appears to have cultivated nothing but admirers. [His] contemporaries remarked on his range, volume, and the velveteen beauty of his tone. … He had only to sing, and those who listened were intoxicated. All the women went mad.”

On Saturday, May 3, beginning at 8:00 pm at William Busta Gallery and in Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church on Sunday, May 4 beginning at 4:00pm (a pre-concert lecture by Dr. Georgia Cowart begins at 3pm), Les Délices performs a program of operatic excerpts by Lully, Boismortier, Leclair, and Rameau. The concerts features the unique voice and dynamic stage presence of tenor Jason McStoots.

“I’ve wanted to do a program that features a tenor for some time,” Debra Nagy told us by telephone. “In particular I wanted to focus this program with Jason on the career of Jélyotte because Jason is also a fabulous comic actor. He has a very expressive face. [Read more…]

Review: Les Délices — Conversations galantes at Tregoning & Co. (February 1)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Les-Delices-3Les Délices, the Cleveland early music ensemble that devotes itself to resurrecting treasures from the French Baroque, designed its mid-winter program, Conversations galantes, around the idea of musical conversation as that social art was practiced in the salons of eighteenth-century Paris.

Alas, there were fewer voices in last weekend’s discussions than originally planned. Nagy had lined up a program of quartets, but a sudden illness reduced the group to oboe, violin and harpsichord and the playlist had to be changed accordingly. Happily, the repartée in the altered program was probably no less eloquent. In music by Rameau, Leclair, François Couperin and Forqueret, Debra Nagy, Julie Andrijeski and Michael Sponseller provided plenty of engaging wit and delicious colloquy to delight the audience at Tregoning & Co. gallery on Saturday evening.

The hour-long program began and ended with all hands on deck. [Read more…]

Preview: Les Délices: “Conversations Galantes” — Visiting the Salons of 18th-Century Paris

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Les-Delices-3The salons of eighteenth century Paris sparkled with witty repartee, political argument, fashionable taste-making, and philosophical deliberation. The rigid hierarchy of the French court disappeared as ranks and genders mingled in exquisite conversation. On Saturday, February 1 at 8:00 pm at Tregoning & Co. Gallery in Cleveland and on Sunday, February 2 at 4:00 pm in Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, French Baroque specialists Les Délices will recreate that environment with their program Conversations Galantes.

“Conversations galantes is the idea of intellectual exchange that happens within the salon,” oboist and Les Délices director Debra Nagy said during a recent telephone conversation. “We’re featuring some of the earliest French quartet repertory, which is based on that idea of conversation, where all the voices are equal and contribute to what’s happening melodically.”

The title of the program comes from a 1743 collection of quartets by Louis-Gabriel Guillemain, some of which will be performed. [Read more…]

Review: Les Délices — A Woman Scorned at Plymouth Church (October 6)

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by Nicholas Jones

Les-Delices-Woman-Scorned-BustaAnger, murder, guilt, and recrimination! The last episode of Breaking Bad? No: this was the opening concert of the season for Les Délices, the remarkable Cleveland-based chamber group specializing in music of the French baroque.

The program, “A Woman Scorned,” featured lurid stories of betrayal and revenge involving five of the great women characters of classical myth. These were stories that the court of Louis XIV loved, apparently seeing them as safe ways in which to rehash their own tortuous infidelities: Juno, the goddess jealous of her philandering husband Jove; Phaedra, driven mad by passion for her stepson; Armida, sorceress and seductress; Circe, who turned men to beasts; and Medea, sorceress and lover—passed over by Jason for a younger woman, she proceeds to poison her rival and then murder her own children in order to drive her ex to kill himself.

Not material for the faint-hearted. [Read more…]

Preview: Les Délices —Woman Scorned

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by Mike Telin

Les-Delices-3For the past four years Les Délices have presented well-researched, thought-provoking and highly entertaining programs that explore music and themes of the French Baroque. Their concerts are performed in intimate settings that create an atmosphere similar to that in which this music was intended to be enjoyed.

This weekend Les Délices begins their Fifth Anniversary season with Woman Scorned, a program of wild, descriptive music depicting sorceresses and temptresses that explores universal themes of desire, jealousy, shame, and revenge by giving voice to the spurned lovers of antiquity. The program also includes two works never before heard in Ohio.

In addition to Les Délice’s regulars, baroque oboist Debra Nagy, baroque violinist Julie Andrijeski, viola da gambist Emily Walhout and harpsichordist Michael Sponseller, Woman Scorned also features renowned, Chicago-based mezzo-soprano Angela Young Smucker.

Les Délice’s founder and artistic director Debra Nagy says the program exalts in wild, passionate music portraying characters such as Circé, Phèdre, Armide, and Medea while contemplating the somewhat misogynist portrayals of the women in these works that is – in some cases – far removed from their classical origins. [Read more…]

Review: Les Délices — Four Seasons at William Busta Gallery (April 20)

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by Nicholas Jones

Les-Delices2As I write this, Ohio seems to be stuck in an endless winter of discontent. But the ungiving weather was more than a little mollified by the warm elegance and sprightly eccentricity of this weekend’s seasonal program by Les Délices. The group, founded and directed by baroque oboist Debra Nagy, is now completing its fourth season, and specializes in the music of the French Baroque.

The centerpiece of the program was a substantial cantata titled L’Hyver (Winter), one of a cycle of four cantatas on the seasons by the early-18th-century composer Joseph Bodin de Boismortier. With appropriate Baroque word-painting, Boismortier depicts winter’s horrors—bare trees, mountain storms, and frost-stricken buds—then shifts to winter’s pleasures—dances, feasts, and plays. Winter’s destructive fury turns out to be a foil to the delights of a Parisian salon, well heated and well stocked with wine and music.

The presiding muse of those delights was the masterful soprano Clara Rottsolk, who was featured on Les Délices’ recent CD, Myths and Allegories. [Read more…]

Preview: Les Délices’s Four Seasons — a conversation with hurdy-gurdy master Tobie Miller

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by Mike Telin

Miller-TobieIf you have been thinking that you wish you could find a concert featuring the hurdy-gurdy, this is your lucky weekend. And leave it to the always creative Les Délices to provide you with that weekend. On Saturday, April 20, beginning at 8 pm in William Busta Gallery and Sunday, April 21, beginning at 4 pm in Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church, Les Délices presents Four Seasons. The concerts feature master hurdy-gurdy player Tobie Miller in performances of Vivaldi’s famous violin concertos Printemps/Spring and l’Automne/Fall in eighteenth century arrangements for hurdy-gurdy and chamber ensemble by Nicholas Chedeville. The concerts also include music of Charles Buterne and Joseph Bodin de Boismortier.

Tobie Miller grew up in a family of classical musicians. After studies in Early Music Performance at McGill University, she moved to Basel to pursue postgraduate studies at the prestigious Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Miller was the recipient of a further grant from the Canada Council in 2011-2012 for her work on the baroque hurdy-gurdy and transcriptions of J.S. Bach’s solo cello and violin repertoire for that instrument. Currently dividing her time between Basel and Montreal, Miller continues to perform and record with many ensembles on both continents. We reached Tobie Miller by telephone and began by asking her how she first came to the hurdy-gurdy. [Read more…]

Review: Les Délices — Portrait of Love at Tregoning and Co. Gallery (February 16)

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by Nicholas Jones

Shaw-NorthThe second of Les Délices’s offerings for this, its fourth season, gave its audience a Valentine’s Day treat (a couple of days late), replete with musical confections, kisses, sentiment, and…ah, je ne sais quoi!

Love, usually thought of in reference to a couple, became here a matter of the four players, sometimes flirting, sometimes fierce, sometimes laughing, sometimes in earnest, but clearly bound to each other in the bonds of the music. [Read more…]

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