Woke Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Les Indes galantes

Gyorgy Vashegyi's Budapest-based Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra has become my favourite Original Instruments group. They were so good in Mondonville's Grands Motets and Isbé, also from Glossa; more recently they've moved on to the great genius of the French baroque, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and his Naïs.

"I like people", said Voltaire, speaking about Jean-Philippe Rameau, "who know when to drop the sublime in order to banter." In moving from tragedie to "the naïve graces of ballet",  Rameau had taken on the impressively advanced - anti-clerical and anti-imperialist - politics of his librettist Louis Fuzelier. As happens so often, satire can hide revolutionary ideas. This is actually very nearly a "progressive" agenda, even by today's standards (don't get me started on the 2020 Democratic primary), but for someone who made a (good) living flattering the monarchy, it's an interesting side-line.

As in the previous project, Vashegyi and his talented musicians work with the Centre de Musique Baroque in Versailles. Academic precision never gets in the way of the obvious fun of the project, though. Once again we're treated to great choral and solo singing, again led by soprano Chantal Santon-Jeffery. In a review of another recording of Les Indes galantes, I talk about "the great, dumb fun" of this project, and this is something that would be easy enough to lose. But there's no worry of that here; we get the full deal, and it's fun to go along for the ride.

This album will be released on May 3, 2019.

Marvel before Marvel

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Naïs

The operas of the French baroque are much more accessible to the non-specialist than one might think. It's not only about the music, as gorgeous as it is. With gods, demigods and super-heroes, and an emphasis on special effects and stage machinery, we're more than half-way to today's DC and Marvel-based blockbuster movies. Jean-Philippe Rameau's Naïs is especially appealing, with a story based on Greek myth overlaid with very un-subtle political commentary, or rather, shameless flattery of the King. To further extend its appeal, there are nymphs and shepherds dancing Gavottes, Sarabandes, Contredanses and Tambourins in what I'm sure were spectacular ballets.

Gyorgy Vashegyi's Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra, so good in Mondonville's Grands Motets and Isbé, also from Glossa, provide the sumptuous music that keeps the action flowing and the ballet dancers cavorting. The singing is absolute first class, beginning with superb choral singing, and moving throughout the cast. Chantal Santon-Jeffery is superb in the title role.

Though recorded in Budapest, this is a joint project with the Centre de Musique Baroque in Versailles. Everything is carefully researched to ensure the authenticity of French musical heritage, which in that country is taken extremely seriously. More importantly, this is obviously the result of musicians engaged in and enjoying their music-making.

This album will be released on April 20, 2018.

A delightful album of music from the French Baroque

Age of Indulgence: Les Delices

The Cleveland-based ensemble Les Delices was founded by oboist Debra Nagy in 2009. This collection of pieces from the French Baroque has been put together to highlight the high quality and variety of the music from that period, and the style and musicianship of these fine players. There are some fairly obscure composers here; Duphly, Philidor and Guignon won't be showing up on many classical music favourites lists. But all of this music makes pleasurable listening. This is mainly music from the late Baroque, with an appealingly mannered way of spinning earlier tropes through unexpected textures and harmonies, leaving some traces of Italian instrumental virtuosity but with an unmistakable French style and grace. Then there are a few pieces of true genius that pop up, like the sublime Entrée de Polymnie from Rameau's Les Boréades, and this Tambourins from his Dardanus. It all comes together to make a truly delightful album.

The ideal of enlightened transcendence

Just over a year ago I reviewed the first volume in Tempesta di Mare's Comédie et Tragédie series. I especially enjoyed Jean-Fery Rebel’s Les Elements, but the entire disc gave me a strong feeling of the civilized order of Enlightment Age music. We have more of the same in this second disc, from three different composers living in the same world, and the Philadelphia-based baroque ensemble Tempesta di Mare.  I wondered if the temperature of the first disc was a bit cool, and I wonder the same about this one. In Leclair's suite from Scylla et Glaucus, the Airs des demons don't sound especially demonic. Red Priest are perhaps a bit over the top (their album is called Nightmare in Venice), but this Air has got drive:



However, I'm always ready to hear the siren call of Enlightenment, of civilization and order. The theatre in 17th century France was full of spectacle and engines bearing Gods and artificial lightning and thunder (the equivalent of today's "special effects"). There was underlying it all, though, this wonderful ideal, part ancient and part modern, of enlightened transcendence. Leclair's music, and Charpentier's, and especially Rameau's, embodies this ideal. As fun as the "mad, bad and deliciously dangerous" shiny bits can be, Tempesta di Mare delivers something more valuable.

An inspired pastiche

From October 3, 2015:

In one of my favourite scenes in the 1942 film Holiday Inn Bing Crosby conducts a small orchestra to accompany Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds, each in elaborate 18th century attire, as they start a dance from some imagined version of Versailles. Bing sabotages the show by having his musicians break into jazzy riffs just when the dancers are getting in to the period feel. The two styles juxtaposed are much more interesting than either on its own. The results, besides being very funny, are surprisingly musical.

Until fairly recently we were well in to a period of graceless, static, un-musical stagings of works by the great 17th and 18th century masters, as academics brought complex historically-informed performance practices to bear on the opera and ballet stage. Now, as people let their hair down a bit, we can all loosen up, let the musicians swing, and have some fun. This is obviously happening with everyone involved in this production of one of the great works of the French Baroque, Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes. This remix, whose primary author is Director and Choreographer Laura Scozzi, is anything but subtle. This becomes clear in the Prologue, where nudity plays the same role it did in the 1968 musical Hair: to represent the natural world, honesty and freedom. This is great, dumb, fun. After this good-natured romp, the very attractive principals (who are luckily all excellent singers, and, mainly, fine actors) present four separate tableaux set in various parts of the world. This pastiche of 18th and 21st century world views takes on darker hues as Scozzi teases out surprisingly poignant themes related to the various plights of refugees, the natural world, women and aboriginal peoples, without doing any real damage to Rameau’s, and his librettist’s, original ideas.

Both the anarchic fun and the serious undercurrents are mirrored, and enhanced, by the superb orchestral and choral forces of Les Talens Lyriques marshalled by Christophe Rousset. The music itself brings as much joy and powerful emotions as the funny stage business and ripped-from-the-headlines drama. Bravo Maestros Rousset and Scozzi, and especially Maestro Rameau!

Here is the NSFW "teaser" for the DVD release. Beware of what the YouTube commenter (I know!) calls "shear vulgarity".