Saturday, October 25, 2025
Berliner Philharmonie, Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße, Berlin
““Nothing that touched the heart”, complained one critic after the premiere of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Hippolyte et Aricie. Rameau’s expressive, harmonically daring music irritated the audience, who were used to the simpler style of Jean-Baptiste Lully. Rameau or Lully? A question that caused a veritable culture clash. Today, both are regarded as the key composers of the French Baroque. Emmanuelle Haïm, an expert in Early music, sheds light on this fascinating controversy – an evening full of elegance and dramatic intensity.“
Selectively the Berliner Philharmoniker plans a Baroque programme with a leading exponent of the repertoire, this time Emmanuelle Haïm (with Jordi Savall) due soon for Gluck and Rameau, and Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony). Haïm is a stylish interpreter of her chosen music, imparting her learning and enjoyment to colleagues, opening here with the regal slants of Lully’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, colourful and ceremonial, with, among others, recorder, oboe, bassoons, harpsichord, chamber organ (more seen than heard), theorbo, tinkling and skin percussion, and, consistently during the evening, the two fine singers. If Haïm’s gestures are more robotic than expressive, the ears hear much more expression than robotics. The rest was Rameau, including a storm with sound-effects, and, in comparison with Lully, deeper realms of expression, livelier rhythms and a wider chart of colour. Yet, there were (too?) many selections, enough from the three Rameau works, however attractive individually, to be rather samey, and, transferable between opuses. This was brought home with the encore, ‘Happy we’ from Handel’s Acis and Galatea, superbly uplifting and the concert’s highlight. What had been promoted as a contest between Lully and Rameau was won by a German-born, Italian-sponsored, UK-domiciled composer.
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Suite arranged by Emmanuelle Haïm
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Hippolyte et Aricie, Suite arranged by Emmanuelle Haïm
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Castor et Pollux: Excerpts
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Dardanus, Suite arranged by Emmanuelle Haïm
Conducted by William Christie.
Joan Sutherland, Peter Pears; cond. Sir Adrian Boult (1959).