This year’s 250th Rameau anniversary has produced some fine discs, but surely none more striking yet eccentric than this strongly profiled offering from the new bad boy of early music, the conductor Teodor Currentzis. He whisks Rameau out of his 18th-century context and makes him a creator of avant-garde sounds which are meant to enable you to “listen to your sound of light”. Hmm, well sometimes this works, with vivid contrasts in the overtures to Zoroastre and Naïs, but sometimes it is just too extreme – the ravishing Boréades Act 4 entrée and the final air, Tristes apprêts, are just too drawn-out for musical sense. Yet there is highly original thinking here, and you cannot argue with the sophistication of the playing by the orchestra MusicAeterna.
