Rameau fans will rejoice over this world premiere recording … there’s elegant, expressive heart-warming singing from Matthew Brook and Anna Dennis. One of the chief pleasures lies in the band’s virtuosity, including a brace of fantastically flighty flutes, playing throughout with the most impressive, almost gleeful, brio

There is an indefinable sophistication to the OAE sound here that bears comparison with Les Arts Florissants - high praise in repertoire like this … The finest of the singers is Anna Denis’ Chloé, who is full of wide-eyed innocence but marries this with a gloriously refulgent tone. There is a haunting, luxurious quality to her voice that I found utterly beguiling, and her singing is a joy throughout.

The performance reveals Williams to be more than merely a musicologist. His idiomatic direction shows not only just appreciation for Rameau’s sinuous lyricism, but also a lively rhythmic response to the dances, in the process eliciting much fine playing from the OAE, whose horn players deserve special mention. The cast is characterful, with the bass Matthew Brook relishing the role of the scheming Anacréon, Anna Dennis a charmingly vulnerable Chloé and Agustín Prunell-Friend youthfully ardent in the haute-contre role of Batile, although there is rather too much vibrato in the voice.

This Rameau Project... shows how integrated research and performance have now become...The music here is well worth restoring: the instrumental dances full of burbling flutes, whooping horns and beating drums show Rameau as thoroughly contemporary in his vivid imagination; they rather overwhelm the paler vocal lines.

sweetly sung.