Rameau: Pieces for Keyboard
Jill Crossland (piano)
Crossland here claims Rameau for the piano and her programme is elegantly plotted, though in Les cyclopes there's no substitute for the harpsichord's menace.
Rameau: Pieces for Keyboard
Jill Crossland (piano)
Purchase product
Crossland here claims Rameau for the piano and her programme is elegantly plotted, though in Les cyclopes there's no substitute for the harpsichord's menace.
About
Jean-Philippe Rameau’s modest output of works for keyboard (around 50 in total) are a crowning influence in French 18th-century instrumental music – summed up by one commentator as being “a paradigm of his mastery, for surveying it is to review many facets of his greatness”. Famed for his additional contributions to French opera and for his advances in musical theory of the day, his keyboard works are beguiling in their mix of subtle beauty and virtuosity. The characterful works invoke both pictorial and poetic themes – a style that performer Jill Crossland describes as an “ability to characterise, to construct a miniature world in a few instants.”
Contents and tracklist
Work length21:34
Rameau:
Pièces de Clavecin avec une méthode sur la mécanique des Doigts ('Suite' in D): i. Les Tendres Plaintes (The Tender Complaints)
Work length3:16
Work length26:06
Awards and reviews
April 2012
Crossland here claims Rameau for the piano and her programme is elegantly plotted, though in Les cyclopes there's no substitute for the harpsichord's menace.
April 2012
Jill Crossland's intelligent, stylish, tasteful, tonally resourceful and beautifully recorded Rameau interpretations take their place alongside these luminaries [Tharaud and Hewitt]...Crossland's elegance and subtle tonal gradations particularly shine in the Suite in D...This is Crossland's finest CD yet, and one hopes that she'll set down Rameau's remaining keyboard works in due course.
13th January 2012
Jill Crossland tackles these pieces, ranging from the frolicsome "Gigue" to the limpid "La Villageoise", with due delicacy and wit. One's reminded of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, but with the formality tempered by a blitheness of spirit and a modern elegance that prefigures the Romantics.
30th March 2012
Crossland doesn’t attempt to mimic the sound of the harpsichord, and she’s careful not to let the florid ornamentation get in the way of the music. What you hear is supremely elegant and technically brilliant. She’s also alive to the fun in this music...This is a consistently delightful disc, the richness of the piano sound adding to the pleasure.
