‘Hats off ,Gentlemen,a genius’ Jean Rondeau at the Wigmore Hall

https://keyboardtrust.org/2021/08/podcast-video-jean-rondeau-interview/

No doubt for me this is the finest artist before the public today. Eighty minutes in which the golden aura that surrounded him illuminated and uplifted souls as no other artist can today .
Swaying gently as the music just poured from him with a simplicity and staggering mastery.
It was just him and us immersed in a glorious outpouring of golden strands of music.
This was an artist recreating the music with an improvisatory mastery and we were held mesmerised in his spell
No external assistance from I pads which would have been unthinkable with an artist of his genius because this wild looking young man carries the music with him deep in his soul
‘Hats off a Genius’ is too little to express the emotions that his pure simple music making provokes and enriches. It was to the ‘Barricades’ that he turned at the end of this musical seance as an encore , coming full circle as he played it ever more searchingly with its beguiling insinuatingly daring harmonic changes. The Wiggies in delirium wanted even more and this humble servant of music sent us away with the most famous of all baroque pieces :’Le Tic Toc Choc’ ,played with astonishing fluidity and plucked ease – Sokolov eat your heart out !

Les Barricades Mystérieuses (The Mysterious Barricades) is a piece of music that Francois Couperin  composed for harpsichord  in 1717. It is the fifth piece in his Ordre 6ème de clavecin in , from his second book of collected harpsichord pieces (Pièces de Clavecin).

“The four parts create an ever-changing tapestry of melody and harmony, interacting and overlapping with different rhythmic schemes and melodies. The effect is shimmering, kaleidoscopic and seductive^”

Debussy considered François Couperin to be the “most poetic of our [French] harpsichordists” expressed particular admiration for Les Barricades Mystérieuses.In 1903, wrote: 

“We should think about the example Couperin’s harpsichord works set us: they are marvelous models of grace and innocence long past. Nothing could ever make us forget the subtly voluptuous perfume, so delicately perverse, that so innocently hovers over the Barricades Mystérieuses.”

‘Hats off ,Gentlemen,a genius’ Jean Rondeau at the Wigmore Hall

Jean Rondeau at the Barbican

Goldberg alla Rondeau

The Rebirth of the Harpsichord Jean Rondeau in recital