Pièces de clavecin en concerts (1741)

Description

Trevor Pinnock, in this recording originally released in 2002, returned to a composer whose discography he had marked 30 years earlier. His complete recording of the four Books for harpsichord was, in the early 1970s, the first that was both “historically informed” and frankly virtuosic. When he finally decided to record the Pièces en concerts, his Rameau had not changed one bit and had not aged a day. Classics do not go out of fashion. An opulent and subtle harpsichord, classical not by its restraint but by its confidence in every effect, by that “plump health of the classical eras” that Zola, poor man, detested. The hedonistic opulence of this version also rests on Jared Sacks’s recording, which lets violin, viola and harpsichord blend into the ever-changing orchestral palette dreamed up by Rameau, without the slightest confusion. Pinnock had brought together two outstanding colorists. On viola, Jonathan Manson, expert in the metamorphoses Rameau asks of him (sometimes a resonant and slightly “fat” orchestral bass, sometimes a slender tenor). On violin, the ultimate luxury, Rachel Podger. A few years earlier she had accepted the post of leader of the English Concert, Pinnock’s sumptuous orchestra, and had just received the first Diapason d’or in a long series, for a solo Telemann album. Their flourishing dialogue takes Rameau literally: “conceal art by art itself.” What delight in this trompe-l’oeil!