The stage was bathed in shifting colors, and the performers were painted in silver from top to bottom. They began the concert as statues, seated motionless onstage for some ten minutes as we patrons filed rapidly into the Indianapolis Art Center auditorium. We came to hear Horacio Franco of Mexico, the world's greatest recorder player (I think it's safe to say). Franco has previously appeared here several times under Festival Music Society auspices as a member of the Trio Renacimiento Hotteterre, and reportedly began his career playing for pesos on Mexican city streets. This time he brought with him a large assortment of these stick-shaped relatives of the flute. But this penultimate concert of the summer's Indianapolis Early Music Festival was offering up shtick as well as "stick." Franco's partner, Victor Flores, brought with him only one doublebass, and one was all he needed.

FMS musical director Frank Cooper said he was a bit reticent at first about the manner of presentation, but Franco indicated he had successfully used this "performance art" for some of his programs in other cities and was anxious to try it here. In any case we were rewarded--shtick and all--with some of the most dazzling display of virtuosic prowess I've ever heard from any instrumentalist. No period in Western music history was immune from Franco and Flores' onslaught: We heard "Aquila altera" by Jacobo da Bologna from the 14th century--to an arrangement of John Lennon's "Eleanor Rigby"--and everything in between.

While, in my old-fashioned way, I might question whether Franco's visuals tied in with the program's wide-ranging music styles and periods, I can't argue that this mild-mannered nod to the present-day rock concert--without strobe lights, amplification or the attendant 130 plus decibels--would not have engaged any music lover of any persuasion. Surely no one could complain that this concert was either "stuffy" or "artsy-fartsy." It's thus too bad that the audience couldn't have been populated with more younger people--especially those with a currently jaded view of "classical" music.

A few pieces on last Friday's program came from famous composers such as Bach and Vivaldi, but most didn't. We heard a dance by Ernesto Lecuona of "Malegueña" fame, a Gavotte by the post-Romantic Russian/Soviet composer Rheinhold Gliére, an Adagio and Presto from the early 1700s by Jean Barriére--with the Presto anticipating note-for-note the "Jupiter" theme from Mozart's last symphony--and many, many others. All these provided an enormous range of styles, tempos and colors, as well as a showcase for Franco's straight tones, flutter tones, vibrato, and other easily delivered nuances. As a virtuoso player, he was perhaps most greatly challenged by an anonymous 17th-century English piece entitled "A Division on a Ground" (?), with notes pouring out at the speed of marbles from a gradually overturning hopper. Though Franco was undaunted, Flores had to work hard on his big-bellied bass to keep up with him; otherwise Flores gave his partner well honed, polished support throughout.

This early music series concluded in a more orthodox fashion Sunday evening with the appearance of the New York based Concert Royal, this time featuring French music of the late Baroque. The IAC auditorium was packed to overflowing, mainly to hear soprano and Indianapolis native Kirsten Blase join forces with the four Concert Royal instrumentalists. Though Blase dominated the evening with two Cantatas by the underrated Louis Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749), the weekend clearly belonged to Horacio Franco.