Was Rameau the quintessentially French composer? Debussy certainly thought so, and penned an Hommage à Rameau in Book 1 of the Images for piano, heard here. Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson isn't the first to put the two composers together in a program, but it's rarely been done as well as it is here. Ólafsson punctuates sets of short, pictorial Rameau pieces, mostly from the Pièces de Clavecin of 1724 but also including some of his wilder later experiments, with some Debussy favorites that bring out Debussy's status as a ...
Read More
Was Rameau the quintessentially French composer? Debussy certainly thought so, and penned an Hommage à Rameau in Book 1 of the Images for piano, heard here. Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson isn't the first to put the two composers together in a program, but it's rarely been done as well as it is here. Ólafsson punctuates sets of short, pictorial Rameau pieces, mostly from the Pièces de Clavecin of 1724 but also including some of his wilder later experiments, with some Debussy favorites that bring out Debussy's status as a forerunner of neoclassicism especially well. He finds humor in both composers, which not every keyboardist does, and the sequencing of tracks is wonderfully calibrated: online listeners should not accept any invitations to shuffle here. Ólafsson pushes his Rameau a bit in the direction of Debussy, with judicious pedal and graceful phrasing, and his Debussy moves a bit toward Rameau: it is clean and crisp without being in the slightest bit inexpressive. The end result is a program that's...
Read Less