Rameau Tharaud

Alexandre Tharaud pays tribute to composers associated with the courts of the French kings Louis XIV, XV and XVI. Lully, Rameau, Charpentier and François Couperin stand beside lesser-known masters: d’Anglebert, Forqueray, Royer, Duphly and Balbastre. “I’ve always been attracted by French music of this period,” says Tharaud, adding that when he plays the album’s initial Rameau prelude, “It’s like being alone at Versailles, opening the doors and entering those huge, imposing rooms.”

Alexandre Tharaud has always defied categorization—a rare musician who dazzles equally in J.S. Bach as he does in The Beach Boys, and everything in between. Pieced together from recordings made over 30 years, this collection finds Tharaud steering us on a four-hour journey through some of the piano’s greatest solo works, thrilling and beautiful concerto movements, and an array of ravishing discoveries including the charming, post-Impressionist worlds of French composers Paul Le Flem and Jean Wiener. Elsewhere, the variety on display is breathtaking, the programming daring as Tharaud moves seamlessly from Satie to Bach, Fauré to Gershwin, even Morricone to Poulenc. It’s a bold move to place Debussy’s sumptuous “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune” after the crispness of Mozart’s “Alla Turca", for instance, but the contrast is spellbinding—as is every moment of this extraordinary piano treasury.

The biggest surprise on this wonderfully exuberant and exhilarating disc comes with the very first notes: the piano tone is rich and full, worlds away from the slightly distant, musical-box tone that is often thought appropriate for recordings of Domenico Scarlatti's sonatas on a modern concert grand. But as the soundworld suggests, Tharaud is totally unapologetic about playing these pieces – all originally composed for harpsichord even though the earliest fortepianos were in circulation in Scarlatti's time – on a piano. In the sleevenotes, Tharaud says that of the four baroque keyboard composers that he has recorded so far – Bach, Couperin, Rameau and now Scarlatti – it's the last whose music is most suited to this treatment. His selection of sonatas is chosen for maximum variety, with a group in which the Spanish inflections of flamenco and folk music can be heard, others in which he gets a chance to show some dazzling technique, alongside those in which the playfulness is replaced by profound introspection.

Twenty years after his harmonia mundi recordings, reviving the tradition of performing the great French harpsichord composers (Rameau, Couperin) on the piano, Alexandre Tharaud now joins forces with his longstanding partner Jean- Guihen Queyras to explore the works of Marin Marais… on piano and cello. Drawing on their respective experiences in Baroque music, the two artists have taken up the challenge of presenting the essence of the master of the viola da gamba: timeless, even universal.

A midprice reissue collecting this young French pianist s three baroque recordings. I fell in love with Tharaud s Rameau disc several years ago and never once missed the rattling sound of the harpsichord. Tharaud points out that Rameau s frequent ornamentation would have served to prolong notes on a harpsichord. This isn t necessary on a modern piano, and there s an incredible delicacy to the pianism here, with the trills and turns played with a barely credible lightness of touch. It s infectious stuff, with the witty character pieces from the Suite in G vivid and alive.

It’s puzzling that many of the inventive, magical harpsichord pieces that Alexandre Tharaud plays here have never been recorded on the piano before. Perhaps, in our modern era, we’ve become too bound by the “rules” of historical performance—which would be a shame, because the French composers of the 17th and 18th centuries, all of whom here served at one time or another at the Court of Versailles, wrote enchanting, sophisticated keyboard music. Just listen to the delicate filigree of Rameau’s ornamented “Le Rappel des oiseaux,” Royer’s strikingly modern “La Marche des Scythes,” and the stately simplicity of D’Anglebert’s “Sarabande”—and marvel at how Tharaud’s playing brings washes of dazzling color and depth of sound to these centuries-old scores.

Applaudi dans le monde entier, célébré par le grand public comme les spécialistes, Alexandre Tharaud est un enfant chéri du piano français. C’est à travers sa discographie qu’il s’est révélé et qu’il a défini sa figure d’artiste unique : une trentaine d’enregistrements, singulièrement variés et imaginatifs. Car aux côtés de ses nombreux disques consacrés à Chopin, Bach et Schubert, d’autres reposent sur des choix plus inattendus : interpréter Rameau au piano, défendre le trop discret Chabrier, replacer Satie à la hauteur qui est la sienne, ressusciter le fameux Boeuf sur le toit. …