Les Boréades was the ultimate opera of French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764). The story of the five-act tragédie lyrique relies loosely on the Greek legend of the sage and healer, Abaris the Hyperborean. Though the work was rehearsed on the Paris Opera in 1763, it was by no means carried out. Rameau died the next 12 months on the age of 80. (The primary totally staged efficiency, led by John Eliot Gardiner, befell in July of 1982).
One of the crucial extraordinary excerpts from Les Boréades is an orchestral interlude from Act IV. It’s music for a legendary procession, without delay noble and sensuous.
Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson’s piano transcription of this music seems on his 2020 album, Debussy-Rameau. Right here is an excerpt from this system observe:
With its elegant touching melody and a wealthy resonant concord of suspended 9ths and 11ths, it might be straightforward to mistake this piece for a late 19th century composition, maybe a piece by Mahler or Sibelius. It was, nonetheless, written practically two centuries earlier by the good French Baroque composer, Jean-Philippe Rameau. Initially an orchestral interlude from his opera Les Boréades, the excellent Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has recorded his personal transcription of it for piano. Rameau gave it the ponderous title of “The Arrival of the Muses, Zephyrs, Seasons, Hours and the Arts.” All these legendary creatures have one thing to do with the humanities and the passing of time and Ólafsson has renamed his association “The Artwork and the Hours,” recalling the Greek aphorism finest recognized in its Latin model: ars longa, vita brevis. This may be loosely translated as “artwork takes time and life is brief.”
Recordings
Featured Picture: “Bust of Rameau” (1760), Caffieri
