Pierre Hantaï, Skip Sempé - Rameau: Symphonies à deux clavecins (2012)

Those confused by the existence of a hitherto-unknown set of Symphonies à deux clavecins by Rameau should be assured that what's heard here isn't some new discovery by the fabulous harpsichord duo of France's Pierre Hantaï and American Skip Sempé. Instead, it's a reconstruction and expansion of something Rameau himself seems to have done in a few instances, and did more often to produce music for a single harpsichord. What you're hearing here are keyboard arrangements of instrumental numbers ("symphonies") from Rameau's operas, along with a few selections from the Pièces de clavecin en concerts. Rameau himself published reductions of pieces from perhaps his most elaborate and pageant-like opera, Les Indes galantes, and other composers including Couperin-issued instructions for realizing music like this. So, while most of this music did not appear in precisely this form in Rameau's time, it certainly could have. Hantaï and Sempé, both masters of the French Baroque keyboard repertory, have a great deal of fun with the music and have the right relaxed style for it. The existing examples by Rameau and others reduce the music to two staves, but a lot of the details are left to the keyboardists to fill out, and the coordinated but seemingly spontaneous duo work here would be worthy of top-flight jazz players. The individual pieces represent Rameau at his most colorful: they are dances, illustrations of operatic scenes, and little airs, all of them bright and tuneful. The result is a recording that will be of equal interest to serious French Baroque specialists and general listeners who enjoy Baroque harpsichord music.