Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)
Nouvelle Symphonie
Florian Sempey (baritone)
Les Musiciens du Louvre/Marc Minkowski
rec. 2021, L’Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles, France
French texts with English and German translations included
CHATEAU DE VERSAILLES CVS062 [65]
Back in 2006 Marc Minkowski put together an enterprising programme of ballets, dances and other instrumental numbers from Rameau’s stage works and called it Une symphonie imaginaire. Of course this was not the kind of symphony created by Haydn, or even like de Lalande’s Symphonies pour les soupers du roi, namely suites of dances for concerted groups of instruments. Rather, it was simply an attractive programme of instrumental numbers taken from stage works which were primarily vocal. He has now devised a successor, called simply Nouvelle symphonie, but you need to be aware of its predecessor to understand what is going on. The sleevenote explains that this was a project to replace projected performances of the Mozart da Ponte operas which had to be postponed because of the Covid lockdown.
I am no baroque specialist, but I have always enjoyed what of Rameau I have heard, which includes the original Symphonie imaginaire, because of his attractive melodies, rhythmic propulsion, biting harmonies and varied instrumentation. All these virtues are abundantly present in the new disc, and one advance over its predecessor is that we have a few vocal numbers, sung by the baritone Florian Sempey, who is completely inside the idiom as well as being a native French speaker.
The orchestra is a large one for the time, with, for example, four each of flutes and bassoons. There are even clarinets, then a new instrument, in some numbers – you will hear them first in the overture to Acanthe et Céphise. The orchestral playing is wonderful in its vitality and precision and, I should add, in its intonation, which we have not always had with period instruments. Rameau revels in orchestral colour, frequently allowing the wind instruments to shine and writing passages of extreme virtuosity for the strings, which are executed with aplomb.
There is a wide variety of moods in these twenty numbers. For example some are stately, some fiery, some soothing and gentle, one or two intensely dramatic and one hesitant and questing. The four vocal numbers are interspersed among the instrumental ones. By some way the longest of these, and the longest piece here, is a whole scena from Les Indes Galantes, Huascar’s hymn to the sun, whose temple has been destroyed. However, for me even more impressive, and indeed the climax of the whole programme, is Anténor’s Act IV aria from the 1739 version of Dardanus, in which he confronts the monster which has been sent by Neptune to ravage the coast.
The recording quality is excellent and the presentation exemplary, including useful essays, the composition of the orchestra and the texts of the vocal numbers in French, English and German. This deserves to have an success equal to that of Minkowski’s first Symphonie.
Stephen Barber
Contents
Castor et Pollux, 1737 rev 1754
Overture
Zoroastre, 1749
Air tendre en rondeau
Les Paladins, 1757
Acte II – Entrée très gaye de troubadours
Acte II, Scène 6 “Je puis donc me venger moi-même”
Acte II, Scène 8 – Air de Furie
Les Indes Galantes, 1735
Entrée I – Le Turc généraux – Scène 6 – Air pour les esclaves africains
Entrée III – Les Fleurs – Premier Air pour Zéphire
Entrée III – Les Fleurs – Deuxième Air pour Zéphire
Entrée III – Les Fleurs – Air pour Borèe et la Rose
Entrée II – Les Incas du Pérou “Soleil, on a détruit tes superbes asiles”
Acanthe et Cephise ou La Sympathie, 1751
Ouverture
Acte II, Scène 6 – Entrée des Chasseurs et des Chasseresses
Acte II, Scène 6 – Rigaudons 1, 2 et 3
La Naissance d’Osiris, 1754
Air de musette
Dardanus, 1739
Acte IV, Scène 4 - 2 Voici les tristes lieux
Pygmalion, 1748
Scène 4 -Sarabande pour la Statue
Castor et Pollux
Acte I, Scène 4 – Tamboujrins pour les Spartiates, 1754
Acte II, Scène 1 “Nature, Amour, qui partagez mon coeur”, 1737
Acte II, Scène 5 – Air très gai, 1754
Acte V, Scène 4 – Chaconne, 1754
