If I Could Choose Only One Work By...RAMEAU
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
- It Would Have To Be...Hippolyte et Aricie (opera, 1733)
Because Rameau established the aesthetics of French music for at least the next two centuries, and this is the work that did it.
The List So Far...
1. Ravel: Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Ballet)
2. Bruckner: Symphony No. 7
3. Schubert: String Quintet in C major
4. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
5. Mahler: Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”
6. Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker
7. Debussy: Preludes for Piano (Books 1 & 2)
8: Handel: Saul
9. Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro
10. Brahms: String Sextet No. 2 in G major
11. Vaughan Williams: Job
12. Bach: Goldberg Variations
13. R. Strauss: Four Last Songs
14. Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust
15. Haydn: “Paris” Symphonies (Nos. 82-87)
16. Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen
17. Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor
18. Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor
19. Chopin: Preludes
20. Verdi: Rigoletto
21. Roussel: Symphony No. 2
22. Copland: Appalachian Spring (complete original ballet)
23. Grieg: Peer Gynt Suites Nos. 1 and 2
24. Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
25. Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2
26. Rimsky-Korsakov: Opera Suites (Scottish National Orchestra/Järvi) Chandos
27. Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire
28. Smetana: Ma Vlást
29. Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain
30. Bizet: Carmen
31. Elgar: In the South
32. Sullivan: The Mikado
33. Dvořák: Symphony No. 8; Cello Concerto (Piatigorsky/Munch/Boston Symphony) RCA
34. Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies
35. Monteverdi: Orfeo
36. Scarlatti: Sonatas
37. Schumann: Fantasie in C, Op. 17
38. Berg: Wozzeck
39. Hermann: Psycho (film score)
40. Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini
41. Purcell: Dido and Aeneas
42. Holst: Suites for Military Band
43. Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex
44. Respighi: Three Botticelli Pictures
45. Sibelius: Symphony No. 5; Pohjola’s Daughter (Bernstein, New York Philharmonic) Sony
46. Britten: The Turn of the Screw
47. Borodin: String Quartet No. 2
48. Janácek: The Cunning Little Vixen
49. Korngold: Violin Concerto
50. Tallis: Spem in Alium
51. Nielsen: Symphony No. 5
52. Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915
53. Hindemith: Symphony in E-flat
54. Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov
55. Franck: Violin Sonata
56. Rossini: La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie)
57. Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 5 “Egyptian”
58. Weill: The Seven Deadly Sins
59. Pergolesi: Stabat Mater
60. Albeniz: Iberia
61. Bernstein: Mass
62. Schreker: Chamber Symphony
63. Walton: Variations on a Theme by Hindemith
64. Dukas: Piano Sonata
65. Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
66. Tippett: Piano Concerto
67. Poulenc: Songs (ATMA, 5 discs)
68. Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No. 1
69. Gluck: Alceste
70. Vivaldi: L’estro armonico, Op. 3
71. Puccini: La Bohème
72. Hanson: Symphony No. 2 “Romantic”
73. Alkan: 12 Etudes in All the Minor Keys, Op. 39
74. Dutilleux: Métaboles
75. Glinka: Kamarinskaya
76. Crumb: Makrokosmos III (Music for a Summer Evening)
77. Biber: Sonata violino solo representativa
78. Josquin: Missa Ave maris stella
79. Arnold: Symphony No. 5
80. Fauré: Piano Quartets (Trio Wanderer) Harmonia Mundi
81. Hovhaness: Fra Angelico
82. Martinu: Symphony No. 6 “Fantaisies symphoniques”
83. Grainger: Lincolnshire Posy
84. Corelli: 12 Concerti grossi, Op. 6
85. Bellini: Norma
86. Ives: “Concord” Sonata
87. John Williams: Jaws (film score)
88. Honegger: Le Roi David (King David)
89. Kodály: “Peacock” Variations
90. Milhaud: Une Vie Heureuse (10 CD Set, Erato)
91. Scriabin: Piano Sonatas (Hamelin/Hyperion)
92. Casella: Concerto for Orchestra
93. Rautavaara: Cantus Arcticus
94. Chabrier: España
95. Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
96. Waxman: Sunset Boulevard (film score)
Rameau is one of the greats. I love the music of Indes Galantes.
I LOVE Rameau! He really should be much better known nowadays. As for Lully - I first knew about him in music classes at school when Miss Thompson our music teacher told us that a) none of his musicians liked him because he was a bully; and b) he banged the staff he was using to conduct the performers through his foot, got gangrene and died. Karma a la Francais!
A few years ago, I was asked to name my favorite composer; "impossible to do", I said. But the person pressed on, and I finally said "Ok, if we're going to play this game, it's Rameau." The person was astounded. But I meant it; when given an impossible choice like this, it has to be Rameau.
Hippolyte is as good a choice as any of the operas and/or opera ballets. Sublime music, all the more so due to the amazingly expressive harmonic language. LR
Gorgeous colors and melodies! Who could ask for more?
Words fail me when I try to describe the music of Jean Philippe Rameau. Let’s just say that his music and Voltaire’s writings turned me into at least a bit of a Francophile after years of rabid Germanophilia. Rameau’s music is so marvelous , that I would be very hard put to pick just one of his works. It would have to be either the Suite in E- Minor, or Les Fetes d’Hebe, because I could certainly never exist without the Musette and Tambourin, which he originally composed as part of the Suite ( for solo harpsichord), and later orchestrated for Les Fetes. Vive Rameau et Vive la France! ⚜️🇫🇷
Voltaire? You do know that Rameau and Voltaire hated each other, right? Voltaire didn't even understand Rameau's progressive musical language! Voltaire has always been characterized as a witty man, but he could also be a jerk who liked to bully people, including the man who is arguably the best mathematician to have ever lived on earth, the great Leonhard Euler (of all people!). No wonder Rameau & Voltaire couldn't get along.
Oh well. Even geniuses cannot always agree! I love Rameau's music as well. But for me, it is Rameau's harpsichord music which gets me. Wonderful emotional expression, combined with perfect balance and poise ... displaying these qualities also, a tremendous German composer comes to mind (Bach)
I fully agree with your choice, Dave. In addition, hopefully, at least two very good interpretations are available : by Christie and by Minkowski. I personally prefer Christie's for the beauty of its sound and for the unforgettable presence of Lorraine Hunt.
Yes! His greatest opera and one of the greatest operas. My first encounter with it was the Oiseau-Lyre with Janet Baker and John Shirley-Quirk. I haven't missed a recording of it since.
from rameau my two favorites are......Hippolyte and Aricie / Act III - Ritournelle, and Les Boréades, Act 4: Gavottes pour les heures et les Zéphirs...of course there are other works, I particularly like all of his music for harpsichord with kenneth gilbert on archiv produktion, by the way, knowing that mr gilbert died of covid at quebec city in the spring of 2020, here in canada it went completely unnoticed.....
Dave, unless I'm nuts, we haven't honored some of these folks yet, for whom I have nominations:
-Carl Maria von Weber - Der Freischütz
-George Enescu - Symphony #3
-Olivier Messiaen - Saint François d'Assise
-Heitor Villa-Lobos - BIS album of collected Choros and Bachianas Brasileiras [you called it some time ago]
-William Byrd - Masses for 3, 4, and 4 voices
I hope you'll eventually get around to Frescobaldi, Froberger and the Couperins too!
Excellent choice, as far as I can judge: since I bought the Erato box of Rameau's operas after Dave's recommendation, I have listened to all of them once, but Hippolyte et Aricie is the only one I've studied more thoroughly. I'm still pondering which one shall be next - probably an opéra-ballet such es Les Fêtes d'Hébé.
You will be dazzled by the beauty of Les Fetes, guaranteed.
Coincidentally, I just played Les Indes Galantes! What a great composer.
I'd love to see a Telemann video in this series!
My choice would be the orchestral suite from Les Indes Galantes. Glorious music. Alternatively, a collection of the keyboard music, say, by the wonderful Angela Hewitt.
I'm looking at your shirt and wondering, 'When will Dave return to the Haydn crusade? He's only half done.' Some of us are eagerly waiting.....
I am certainly one of them. It's been such a joyful and enlightening experience so far.
Thanks Dave. No dissent from your choice. I met Pollux, but that’s just because I know it better. And, as you say, he was so generous musically, there are a number of other candidates as his style developed. As I recall there’s also some pretty weird, advanced harmony in H&C, and that’s another reason the critics got upset about it.
RUclips grr. I meant I might have chosen Castor et Pollux. I never met Pollux of course. Might have been interesting though!