Premiered not quite two years later, Zoroastre, a tragédie en musique, was a dramatic spectacle full of demons and furies, love and hate, truth and deception with the lead character, Zarathustra, being both lover and priest.

Unusual to the scoring, always a high point in Rameau's orchestral palette, is the use for the first time of clarinets. Color, however, is not restricted just to Zoroastre, for, unlike the latter which has no prologue, Naïs has a most spectacular one, with an overture depicting Jupiter (read Louis XV) defending Olympus against the Titans, complete with a hair-raising battery of timpani.

Frans Brüggen has previously recorded excerpts from six other Rameau stage works, and the present examples, taken live from Utrecht performances feature the same kind of splendidly characterized dances. Brüggen's period instrument orchestra, numbering some 45 players, is impressively large and imposing, and the sonorous recording, not close-up yet perfectly clear, has admirable richness.

A rather more extended set of excerpts from Naïs has also been recorded on harmonia mundi by Nicholas McGegan, but it would be difficult to choose between them; in any case, if you are seeking a most exciting compilation of orchestral Rameau, it would be difficult to match what one hears here. 
IGOR KIPNIS

JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU
Frans Brüggen
Orchestra of the 18th Century
Glossa GCD 921106
1998 - 64:15 min.