How can you not thrill to Rameau’s dance music? Its sheer physicality was unequalled in the Baroque period, and there’s so much color and invention packed into these two suites that it’s hard to know where to begin. Listen to the festive overture to Le Temple de la Gloire, with its galloping horns and exuberant trills that take over the entire orchestra from the timpani and lower strings right up through the flutes, or to the imposing Chaconne that concludes the music from Dardanus. There’s always something to captivate the ear, and Rameau is about as far away as possible from conventional “sewing-machine” Baroque music.
Of course, these suites have been recorded before, and very well at that–most notably by Nicholas McGegan for Harmonia Mundi and Conifer; but this is the first time that they have appeared together, and the pairing is apt. Dardanus is darker and more subdued as befits its tragic subject, and Le Temple de la Gloire is all celebratory brilliance. The general excellence of Jeanne Lamon and her Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with their previous recordings for various labels. The horns play both boldly and accurately, the flutes and oboes combine good intonation with attractive tone, and the strings never acquire that ugly, authentic-instrument scratchiness. Toss in fine engineering and the result is a winner in every way.
