Les Éléments: Tempêtes, orages et fêtes marines
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Matthew Locke, Jordi Savall, Marin Marais, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Féry Rebel, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Antonio Vivaldi
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Alia Vox
Magazine Review Date: 02/2016
Media Format: Super Audio CD
Media Runtime: 99
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: AVSA9914
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
(Les) Élémens |
Jean-Féry Rebel, Composer
(Le) Concert des Nations Jean-Féry Rebel, Composer Jordi Savall, Composer |
(The) Tempest, Movement: Orchestral excerpts |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(Le) Concert des Nations Jordi Savall, Composer Matthew Locke, Composer |
(6) Concerti for Flute and Strings, Movement: No. 1 in F, 'La tempesta di mare', RV433 |
Antonio Vivaldi, Composer
(Le) Concert des Nations Antonio Vivaldi, Composer Jordi Savall, Composer |
Suite No. 4 |
Marin Marais, Composer
(Le) Concert des Nations Jordi Savall, Composer Marin Marais, Composer |
Overture-Suite in C, 'Hamburger Ebb und Fluth' |
Georg Philipp Telemann, Composer
(Le) Concert des Nations Georg Philipp Telemann, Composer Jordi Savall, Composer |
(Les) Indes galantes, Movement: Air pour les Zephirs |
Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer
(Le) Concert des Nations Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer Jordi Savall, Composer |
(Les) Indes galantes, Movement: Orage et air pour Boree |
Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer
(Le) Concert des Nations Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer Jordi Savall, Composer |
Hippolyte et Aricie, Movement: Bruit de tonnerre (Act 1, scene 4) |
Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer
(Le) Concert des Nations Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer Jordi Savall, Composer |
Zoroastre, Movement: Contredanse |
Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer
(Le) Concert des Nations Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer Jordi Savall, Composer |
Abaris (Les Boréades), Movement: Contredanse très vive |
Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer
(Le) Concert des Nations Jean-Philippe Rameau, Composer Jordi Savall, Composer |
Author: Lindsay Kemp
Most of the music has origins in the theatre, where in Baroque times storms could be potent plot-worriers. Thus we have a short suite from Marais’s opera Alcyone, in which a ‘tempête’ sits among music for lusty matelots and a chaconne for tritons; another short suite drawn from four Rameau operas in which Boreas blows but all ends in a contredanse; Matthew Locke’s fascinatingly angular and melodically unpredictable music for a 1674 production of The Tempest in which, despite the evocatively gathered squall of its innocuously titled ‘Curtain Tune’, the final number is a strictly ordered canon; and Rebel’s ballet Les élémens, with its sensational opening seven-note crunch-chord of chaos. Away from the stage, there is Vivaldi’s well-known Tempesta di mare flute concerto (played here on recorder), and Telemann’s delicious and fluidly playful Hamburger Ebb und Fluth suite – if only today’s flood defences could work as serenely as the Hamburg sluices apparently depicted in this work’s gigue movement!
Jordi Savall directs with typical grandeur and depth of tone. The subject-matter means plenty of work for the two-man wind machine and rumbling drum department, but there is exquisite contrast too in, say, the fluty stillness of Marais’s Ritournelle or the exquisitely graceful ‘sleeping Thetis’ Sarabande of the Telemann. Not everything about a live concert always transfers well to disc. The Vivaldi concerto comes across as stodgy, and the ample acoustic provokes the kind of ensemble problems in the Telemann overture that one imagines would not have survived a studio recording. There are noises too (some, I fancy, coming from the conductor), but the enthusiastic audience participation in the encore – a Rameau contredanse – leaves one in no doubt that a good time was had by all. Whatever was on their minds by then, it wasn’t rising water levels.
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