Last year the Arizona Early Music Society hosted Kathryn Mueller and Kristen Watson, a duo of sopranos, in an intimate recital.
The two longtime friends had so much fun that they decided to parlay the experience into a lasting partnership that includes another longtime friend, noted East Coast harpsichordist Michael Sponseller. The trio's Les Sirènes early-music ensemble will focus on the often-neglected French Baroque repertoire.
"We'd like to do a little bit of everything, but to have French as our specialty will be really neat," Mueller said as the group prepared to make its debut at Sunday's Arizona Early Music Society concert.
Mueller said the idea for the group's French leanings also was inspired by the late University of Arizona music professor James Anthony, who literally wrote the book on French Baroque music. In a career that spanned 40 years at the UA, Anthony compiled an impressive library of French Baroque scores, which Mueller said they are using for Sunday's performance.
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The concert includes masterpieces from 17th- and 18th-century French composers Marc-Antoine Charpentier and François Couperin. The concert revolves around the centerpiece, Couperin's "Troisième Leçon de Ténèbre" (third lesson for Tenebrae), which Mueller describes as an agonizingly beautiful lament about the destruction of Jerusalem.
"The song features the two soprano voices intertwining and leaning on each other in suspension after suspension - a suspension is when the two voices come into a dissonance or clash with each other, and then one voice moves to make it happy and consonant again," Mueller explained.
The program is anchored by Charpentier's "Les Plaisirs de Versailles," a semi-staged mini-opera of sorts meant to entertain the court - it might have been performed for the king himself at Versailles. The piece has two characters - "Music" and "Conversation" - who engage in a quarrel. The bickering stops when the two realize they can work hand in hand to entertain the king.
Sunday's concert marks the first of what Mueller hopes will be many Les Sirènes performances around the country. She said she has been talking with programmers about dates for the 2011-12 season.
When she's not performing with the trio, Mueller is nurturing her solo career.
If you go
Les Sirènes in concert
• Presented by: Arizona Early Music Society.
• When: 3 p.m. Sunday; preconcert talk at 2:30.
• Where: St. Philip's in the Hills Episcopal Church, 4440 N. Campbell Ave.
• Tickets: $25, $22 for seniors, $5 students at the door;297-3448.
• Program: French Baroque works for two sopranos.
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@azstarnet.com or 573-4642.
