by Peter Feher
Most Clevelanders spend at least part of the year wishing they could change the seasons here. But oboist Debra Nagy has actually done it with her ambitious rearrangement of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
In adapting these familiar violin concertos to the strengths and tastes of Les Délices — her period-instrument ensemble that continues to push historical performance in unexpected directions — Nagy has achieved something singular. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
The Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute faculty concert on Tuesday afternoon, June 20 featured flutist Michael Lynn, harpsichordist Mark Edwards, and gambist Rebecca Reed in recently-discovered works by Marin Marais and Michel de la Barre.
The pieces were drawn from a large collection of dance suites offered for sale at a book auction earlier this year in Paris. Lynn learned about it in an email from the auctioneer, who wrote that there was “something related to the flute” in the collection being sold.
“As it turned out there was only a single music book in a very large library of books described as being from the Chateau de Champagne, but it is a superb collection of the earliest traverso solo and duo music written and published in France,” Lynn said during a recent conversation in the Special Collections room at the Oberlin Conservatory Library prior to Tuesday’s concert. “The composers, de la Barre, Hotteterre, and Marais, were all employed by Louis XIV and the music is all from his lifetime.”
by Daniel Hathaway
Les Délices lucked upon a sun-drenched, nearly balmy Sunday afternoon for its February 26 “Enchanted Island” program in Herr Chapel at Plymouth Church — weather that perfectly suited the subject but no doubt affected the turnout for soprano Sherezade Panthhaki’s impressive debut with the ensemble in solo cantatas by Clérambault and Rameau.
Although the ensemble reinvented itself to some extent to weather the pandemic, Artistic Director Debra Nagy continues to return to its original, winning format: one-hour programs of French Baroque repertoire, assiduously researched, prepared, and performed by Cleveland’s finest period instrumentalists, usually featuring guest vocalists. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Why is it that people never seem to tire of 18th-century Scottish folk songs? The moment we hear the poems of A red, red rose, they conjure up the image of the lonely romantic, sitting alone next to a fireplace or in the corner of a village pub while a band entertains the other patrons.
On Saturday afternoon, September 24, Les Délices brought these images to life during their season opener, “The Highland Lassie.” The program mixed an entertaining set of songs steeped in romantic sentimentality, with fiddle tunes that made it impossible not to tap along. The venue — Dunham Tavern Museum — provided the perfect ambiance for the capacity crowd to sit back and enjoy the 60-plus minutes of top-notch performances that blurred the lines between folk song and art song.
by Mike Telin
My luve is like a red red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune;
While these words are attributed to the Scottish bard Robert Burns, he was more accurately the compiler of the famous song. And in their season-opening program, Les Délices keeps the tradition of creating arrangements of songs from multiple sources alive.
On Saturday, September 24 at 4:00 pm and 7:30 pm at Dunham Tavern Museum, Les Délices will present “The Highland Lassie.” The program combines songs, variation sets, and dances — all of which have their origins in the 18th century — performed by Debra Nagy (Baroque oboe, recorders, and voice), Elena Mullins (soprano), Julie Andrijeski (violin), Allison Monroe (violin, viola, and voice), Rebecca Reed (cello), and Mark Edwards (harpsichord). Tickets are available online.
“Developing the program required a lot of source digging, which was pretty fun,” artistic director Debra Nagy said during a recent telephone conversation. “It’s historical from the point of view that I did some research into what an Edinburgh dance band from around 1760 consisted of, and I discovered that even an ensemble of a pair of violins and an oboe could make up a dance band.”
by Daniel Hathaway
Ailurophiles rejoice! There’s a new opera in town, created as many French Baroque titles were back in the day, out of bits and pieces of existing material, and the principal character is a large feline. (It’s actually a princess seeking to be rehumanized through the traditional heroic means of fulfilling a series of impossible challenges or quests.)
The creative team behind The White Cat begins with Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy, who has had Larry Rosenwald adapt Marie-Catherine D’Aulnoy’s story La Chatte Blanche into a five-act (or five-quest) libretto that recasts the manipulative Puss in Boots, who gets ahead almost entirely through trickery, into a kinder, gentler feline. Each quest is linked with a French version of one of Aesop’s Fables coupled with a divertissement, and joined together by well-known tunes like Couperin’s Les Barricades Mysterieuses. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
For centuries the fairy tale of Puss in Boots, the wily cat who stops at nothing to gain power and wealth for his penniless master, has been a source of inspiration for composers and choreographers.
“For some time I’ve been thinking about how to bring attention to the women authors of fairy tales from late 17th-century France,” Debra Nagy said during a telephone conversation. “I started reading them and thinking about which stories would be appealing to a 21st-century reader, and Catherine D’Aulnoy’s The White Cat really drew my attention. It’s an interesting rewrite of Puss-in-boots from the point of view of her humility, kindness, and generosity which is in contrast to the manipulative Puss-in-boots who gets ahead almost entirely through trickery.”
On Friday, April 1st at 7:30 pm at the Akron Public Library, Les Délices will present their new 65-minute opera, The White Cat. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Just in time for Rabbie Burns Day (January 25), Les Délices will release its latest concert series episode, “The Highland Lassie,” for on-demand viewing on Vimeo beginning on Thursday, January 20.
Robert Burns (1759-1796), Scotland’s national bard, played a major role in the preservation of Scottish traditional music, joining a group of collectors who were mainly interested in capturing the texts of ballads passed down orally and thus subject to subconscious or intentional changes as they moved from host to host — not unlike viruses, as we now know all too well.
That process created the families of related songs most famously codified in five volumes published from 1882-1898 by Harvard professor Francis James Child. On this program, one of the best-known families provides soprano Elena Mullins with the material for a sensitive rendition of Barbara Allen. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
No mythological character has inspired musicians more than Orpheus. Legend has it that his music was so powerful that trees and mountains bowed in his presence — his song so beautiful that he convinced the ruler of the underworld to allow him to bring his love Eurydice back from the underworld.
The legend will be brought to life on Thursday, October 7, when Les Délices debuts “Song of Orpheus” on Marquee TV. The program features rarely-heard cantatas by Jean-Philippe Rameau and Philippe Courbois performed by Hannah De Priest, soprano, Jonathan Woody, baritone, Shelby Yamin, violin, Debra Nagy, oboe, Rebecca Reed, gamba and cello, and Mark Edwards, harpsichord. The program will also include the premiere of Woody’s cantata Much Love Betray’d. The online-only event will remain available on demand through November 6. Click here for tickets.
Woody’s performance resumé includes two national tours with Apollo’s Fire, and appearances as soloist with period groups including the Boston Early Music Festival, Tafelmusik, Trinity Wall Street, New York Polyphony, Bach Collegium San Diego, and New York Baroque Incorporated. But he is also a leader in the historical performance performer/composer movement.
During a recent telephone conversation, Woody said that his dedication to keeping the early music canon alive can be traced back to when he was a student of musicologist and historical performance pioneer Bruce Haynes. “I was lucky enough to have him as a professor at McGill University, and he definitely engendered the mentality that the canon of early music could remain alive, and that we had the power to continue to add to it and make it something that wasn’t just stuck in the past.”
by Mike Telin
Once again Les Délices scores a winner with the latest installment of the French Baroque ensemble’s online subscription series. Debuting on Thursday, March 18 at 7:30 pm, “Women of Genius” takes a historically thoughtful and musically fascinating look into the music of female composers who influenced French musical culture. After its debut, the video will be available on-demand through March 29. Read our preview article here. To purchase tickets and view connection details, click here.
The 70-minute program features music and poetry by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, Mme. Duval, Julie Pinel, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and François and Louis Couperin. [Read more…]