by Daniel Hathaway
Recitals that feature duo-harpsichordists are rare enough treats, but the program of French baroque music that Michael Sponseller and Jacob Street played on Les Délices’ series at The Galleries at Cleveland State University on Saturday evening, January 16, was an extraordinary tasting menu of twenty opera-related delights. These ranged from the ancien cuisine music of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marin Marais to the nouvelle cuisine experiments of Armand-Louis Couperin, sandwiched around ten wonderfully varied main courses by Jean-Philippe Rameau and followed by a pair of postprandial confections supplied by Pancrace Royer. [Read more…]
The truism holds that French aristocrats before the Revolution danced time away in utter complacency, refusing to change in the face of the inevitable. The image is probably true with respect to most things that would have mattered to those who stormed the Bastille. But in the world of music, things were changing decades before the Revolution. Writing within a framework of courtly elegance that would have pleased Marie Antoinette, composers were also pushing the boundaries of their music with wit, irony, turmoil, and glimmers of Romantic self-consciousness. 
The mid-1700s was a time when French aristocrats viewed leisure as an occupation, furnishing extravagant houses with the latest trends in art and design. They also perused their fancies as patrons of the arts.
The provocative title of Les Délices’ final program of the season alludes to two composers of the seventeenth-century: the “angelic” Marin Marais (read: pleasant and generous) and the “diabolical” Antoine Forqueray (read: self-centered and cantankerous). With all their differences, the angel and the devil can be strangely allied: both men were virtuosos on, and champions of the seven-string viol, the richly expressive bass instrument that characterizes much of early French baroque music. 
This week Les Délices, Cleveland’s French baroque music specialists, will present “The Angel and the Devil.” The program showcases music by the most famous pair of viola da gamba players of the eighteenth century, Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray. Referred to respectively as The Angel and The Devil, their musical personalities will be brought to life by two modern-day gambists, Josh Lee and Emily Walhout. Oboists and recorder players Debra Nagy and Kathryn Montoya, baroque violinists Scott Metcalfe and Ingrid Matthews will join harpsichordist Michael Sponseller and the dueling gambists in music by Jean-Féry Rebel, François Couperin and Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
Now that the sun is finally beginning to melt some of Cleveland’s snow piles, the Cleveland-based band Les Délices reminds us of the wintry darkness from which we earnestly hope soon to emerge. In a departure from their usual repertoire — the secular music of the French baroque — the group served up a rich and satisfying feast of Lenten fare, a concert of sacred music for the Christian season of penitence and reflection. (This concert repeats on Saturday, March 7, at St. Peter’s Church, Cleveland (7:30 pm) and Sunday, March 8, at Plymouth Church UCC, Shaker Heights (4:00 pm).