Jean-Philippe Rameau was two years older than Bach and lived longer, a prolific French composer with a distinct style and plenty of imagination in his works. How is it that we don’t hear his music much? Perhaps because much of it was work for the stage, and Baroque opera and ballet are expensive to produce today with the elaborate scenery and tricks so much loved then.
A fine violinist and organist, Rameau also composed gems for harpsichord and small chamber groups. It was several of his “Concerts” as they are named, groups of three pieces for three instruments, that comprised the central theme of the program given Sunday night at Nordstrom Recital Hall by Byron Schenkman and Friends. Composed for harpsichord, violin (or flute) and viol (or second violin), these are delightful pieces that one can imagine being performed in a salon of the day.
Schenkman, with violinist Ingrid Matthews and viol player Elisabeth Reed, undertook Concerts Nos. 1, 3 and 4. The component parts are not movements per se, but short pieces, several of which are names of friends or patrons, perhaps a way, as Schenkman noted, of thanking or encouraging donors, or acknowledging a death or a birth.
Rameau had a superb talent for descriptive color in music, and a fine sense of humor with it. The second piece in Concert No. 4, titled “L’Indiscrete,” is a perfect imitation of a gossipy woman with a tongue wagging at both ends, full of exclamatory moments and side whispers. One can just hear her. Another, in Concert No. 3, is a village dance, “Tambourins,” in which one can easily picture peasants in clogs dancing. There’s a portrait of a mercurial financier in “La Lapopliniere”—his name—in Concert No. 3 and a lullaby for the infant of a friend—“La Cupis”—in No. 1.
The trio performed these with aplomb and style, and Schenkman surrounded them with works by four other French composers of the time, most of whom may have known each other: Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Jean-Fery Rebel, Jean-Henri D’Anglebert and Marin Marais. Marais, a famous viol player, was represented by his Suite in A Minor for viol and continuo, a work which displayed all the capabilities of the viol, and to which Reed did full justice.
A delightful concert, this would have been enhanced for many by written program notes, given that Rameau particularly is not an often-played composer. The Italian-style harpsichord, built by Craig Tomlinson and played by Schenkman sometimes sounded a bit on the quiet side, which may have been due to Nordstrom’s acoustics, and might have been improved by bringing the group further forward on stage.