Rameau: Les F?tes de Polymnie

Orfeo Orchestra, Purcell Choir, soliści, Vashegyi, György

GCD 923502

Glossa continues its major contribution to the recording of the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau with a further ballet héroique, Les Fetes de Polymnie, directed by György Vashegyi and featuring accomplished ramistes such as Aurélia Legay, Emöke Barath or Mathias Vidal, and led by the incomparable Véronique Gens in the various vocal roles that appear in the Prologue and the three Entrées of this work. Composed in 1745, an annus mirabilis for France, Rameau, aided by his reformist librettist Louis de Cahusac’s preferences for choruses and ballets, conjured up – in addition to sparkling arias and recitatives – a dazzling mosaic of intermedes, passacailles, chaconnes and descriptive symphonies interspersed with vivid choral contributions, which the Purcell Choir and the Orfeo Orchestra deliver with taste and spirit on this new recording of the festivities. As with the recent Les Fetes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour (conducted by Hervé Niquet), this modern-day revindication of Les Fetes de Polymnie is matched by an essay about the score (placed within its historical context) from Benoît Dratwicki of the supporting institution for this recording, the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.

CD x 2

Glossa

1/5/15

8424562235021