Jean Philippe Rameau: Pièces de clavecin en concerts – Ketil Haugsand

An enrichment of tradition

Violinist Catherine Mackintosh, one of the first of her generation to have specialised in early string techniques, Viola da gambist and cellist Laurence Dreyfus, a noted Bach scholar and specialist in 18th century performance practice, and the award-winning harpsichordist Ketil Haugsand, here performs the extraordinary work “Pièces de Clavecin en concerts” by Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Rameau´s ”Pièces” should be heard as an enrichment the older generation French clavecinistes´ tradition of the emotive world, with the crucial difference being that Rameau not only broadens ideas of characterisation through the crafting of novel melodic “physiognomies” but places a new accent on the depiction of polished conversation and the related art of dalliance. It should be remembered that Rameau, in addition to his position as one of the leading French composers of the eighteenth century, was also Europe´s premier music theorist, and the powerful harmonic direction of the “Pièces” affirms both his superb control over harmonic grammar as well as his exploitation of the “fundamental bass” as a tool for discovering new and arresting progressions.