Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)
Pygmalion (1748)
Pierre Iso (c1715-c1794)
Zémide (1745)
Ema Nikolovska (soprano)
Chœur de Chambre de Namur
a nocte temporis/Reinoud Van Mechelen
French text with English translations in booklet
rec. 2024, Grand Manège, Namur Concert Hall, Belgium
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS174 [78]
With several versions of Rameau’s Pygmalion already available on disc – including another one on this same Château de Versailles Spectacles label issued just last year – the attraction of this release is much more likely to be Zémide by Pierre Iso, seemingly the first time that anything by this composer has been recorded.
Little is known about him, although his compositions were performed at both the Opéra and the chapel at Versailles. He took the side of French musical tradition in the famous Querelle des Bouffons, against the Italianate school of Pergolesi and others, and certainly his compositional style has the authentic accent of music by his native contemporaries such as Rameau and Mondonville. If, on the evidence of his one act acte de ballet Zémide, he doesn’t have their harmonic richness, there is a melodic facility and imaginative orchestration, for instance to depict L’Amour asleep, and later the desert coming alive with flowers. The work also features a couple of duets, which don’t feature too often in Rameau: the first one here (track 38) is a sparring dialogue between the fiery Zémide and L’Amour (Cupid) who keeps his cool, adding an engaging sense of drama to the work.
The CD’s booklet notes that Iso is less convincing in setting to music the verses of Antoine de Laurès’s original classical drama Zémide than in his other one act drama Phaétuse, which begs the question why the latter wasn’t recorded instead. Nevertheless, Zémide makes an apt pairing with Rameau’s setting of the famous story of Pygmalion becoming besotted with the statue he has created, before it magically comes alive. Zémide is a similar tale of apparently hopeless, desperate love as Prince Phasis adores the eponymous icy Queen of Scyros. She and her followers refuse to countenance the pleasures of love, and have armed themselves with a shield from Athene to repel the darts of L’Amour. He and Phasis devise a ruse by which the Queen will be unarmed and yield to love.
Gwendoline Blondeel is common to both works as the personification of L’Amour. Where she sounds somewhat disinterested in Pygmalion, she captures a piercing, plangent quality in Zémide, as she regrets the latter’s aversion to love, and later seeks to persuade the Queen with warm vocal delicacy. As the latter, Ema Nikolovska responds with a harsher edge in her voice, enlivening the dialogue with all the tension and confrontation of a live performance.
Philippe Estèphe’s Phasis brings a somewhat more youthful ardour and glow to the role of the male lover, compared with Reinoud Van Mechelen’s Pygmalion, who now sounds a shade darker and more rugged than he used to, though his address to the still lifeless Statue in the opening scenes is still tender and yearning. Virginie Thomas conveys a slight trepidation as the Statue steps forward into life, before expressing herself with a quiet radiance.
In both works Van Mechelen directs the Chœur de Chambre de Namur, who take a full, dramatically engaged part in Zémide, and the ensemble a nocte temporis. Whereas they adopt a more mellow, pastel tonal colour for Pygmalion – as though it were a bucolic tale – the somewhat simpler, but no less delectable music of Zémide prompts the ensemble to a slightly more pristine sonority in that far less well-known work, helping it to make it conspicuous by contrast. The disc doesn’t offer the last word as far as Pygmalion goes, but admirers of the French Baroque will certainly want this for the rare outing of Iso’s work.
Curtis Rogers
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Cast details
Pygmalion
Céphise – Ema Nikolovska (soprano)
Pygmalion – Reinoud Van Mechelen (haute contre)
L’Amour – Gwendoline Blondeel (soprano)
La Statue – Virginie Thomas (soprano)
Zémide
Zémide – Ema Nikolovska (soprano)
L’Amour – Gwendoline Blondeel (soprano)
Phasis – Philippe Estèphe (haute contre)
