Gluck, Rameau: Orchestral Suites

Two first ever releases from 1965 Philips sessions of 18th century music for the stage conducted by the supremely versatile Sir Charles Mackerras . Eighteenth century music had been a passion for Charles Mackerras ever since childhood. ‘What I particularly like is the beautiful symmetry of it,’ he said in 1977, ‘and the extremely florid de coration which you find in the Baroque art of central Europe. I’ve tried hard not only to be a scholar and a musicologist but to try and interpret old music in the old way, in the way that the composers imagined it. I passionately believe in trying to recreate the sound, the actual noise that is made by an orchestra of Baroque dimensions. The right sound is a little raw.’ In 1964 Mackerras had conducted the UK broadcast premiere of Rameau’s Castor et Pollux , and the following year he made a selection of dance music from his own edition of the score, and took it into the studios w ith the London Symphony Orchestra. When compiling a complementary suite from Gluck’s opera based on the legend of Orpheus and Eur yd ice, he also took an imaginative rather than academic approach, mixing music from both the original Vienna and the later Paris versions of the sco re in order to include all of its most affecting episodes such as the grand Overture and the quiet rapture of the Dance of the B les sed Spirits. The LSO may have been playing on modern instruments, but Mackerras marshalled them in a passable imitation of ‘period’ style, with woodwinds to

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Details

Format: CD
Artist: Charles Mackerras
Release Date: 05 February 2021
Genre: Classical Music
Label: ELOQUENCE / DECCA
Distributor: Universal Music