Sophie Yates - Rameau: Pieces de Clavecin, Vol. 1-2 (2000-2004)

One of the world's preeminent harpsichordists, Sophie Yates is known for her critically acclaimed performances of Baroque music. Universally praised for her profound understanding of Baroque style, Yates is also admired for her refined touch and discreet virtuosity. Indeed, critics have often lauded Yates for subordinating her enormous virtuosity to stylistic and aesthetic concerns. As a specialist in French Baroque music, Yates masterfully captures the elusive style of French Baroque keyboard performance, perfectly conjuring up the enigmatic atmosphere of distant intimacy heard in pieces by Couperin and Rameau. Commenting on her album French Baroque Harpsichord, critic Robert Haskins admired Yates' subtle renditions of Couperin's music. "In her readings of Les Idées heureuses, she savors the melodic quality of the ornamentation and the stately but fluid rhythms to marvelous effect."

From the vantage point of the French Baroque, Yates has also explored Italian, German, and Iberian repertoires, bringing to light many forgotten harpsichord pieces. Her exploration of Spanish and Portuguese music has been particularly successful, yielding the album Spanish and Portuguese Harpsichord, in which, as Haskins observed, she "combines her ability to project a profound inner intensity with scintillant technique." Yates studied harpsichord at the Royal College of Music in London. Her career was launched when she won the International Erwin Bodky Competition at the Boston Early Music Festival. Invited to tour the eastern United States, Yates subsequently received offers from other parts of the world. In fact, Yates could be described as a true globetrotting harpsichordist, having played in Syria, Morocco, Australia, and Japan. With her home base in London, she regularly tours Europe. A teacher at the Royal College of Music, Yates is also a virginals specialist, searching for old instruments and exploring the repertoire. Her highly praised albums, released by Chandos, include Rameau: Pièces de clavecin, Romanesca: Italian Music for the Harpsichord, and Fandango: Scarlatti in Iberia. In 1999, Yates released her first album devoted to Handel's harpsichord music. In the liner notes for her second Handel album, Yates remarked that Handel's harpsichord pieces not only exhibit such typicially Handelian features as rhythmic vitality and melodic inventiveness, but also "give us a fascinating insight into the composer's more private world."




"When was the last time you saw the Marquis de Sade mentioned in the liner notes to an album of Baroque harpsichord music? Sophie Yates does just that in her notes to her Rameau Pièces de clavecin: Vol. 2 album, and better still, she makes you buy the comparison. She quotes Rameau himself, buttering up his audiences for one of the wilder moves in the famed "L'enharmonique," from the Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin of 1728: "The harmony that creates this effect has by no means been thrown in haphazardly; it is based on logic and has the sanction of nature herself; it is the ingredient most savored by the connoisseur…," Rameau wrote. "Shades of Rameau's near-contemporary, the Marquis de Sade," notes Yates! (It's commendable that she handles the note-writing herself, by the way.) Included on this sequel to Yates' other fine albums of Rameau's keyboard music are the two Nouvelles suites, the festive La dauphine of 1747, and solo keyboard versions (something explicitly okayed by Rameau himself) of the Pièces de clavecin en concerts of 1741. Yates has rescued Rameau's keyboard music from a tradition of interpretation that emphasizes its academic side. Her playing is exquisitely balanced between the density of Rameau's music (he is Bach's equal in this respect), its pictorial aspect (carrying on the tradition of Couperin), and its occasional but essential propensity toward exoticism and shock. The counterparts to "L'enharmonique" in the Nouvelles suites are two little pieces entitled "Les Sauvages" and "L'Egyptienne," fascinating representations of the Other in the circumscribed language of Baroque keyboard music. Yates is a powerful player, and if you can get yourself attuned to the closed-hothouse vibe of the French High Baroque, the album's a real thrill ride. And Chandos' sound engineers have done an especially fine job with the solo harpsichord here. Relax and enjoy." AllMusic Review by James Manheim




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