I've been waiting since his `Platee,' and tonight, Nicholas McGegan came
through in Berkeley with a major fix for a bad case of Rameau craving.

The Philharmonia Baroque gave a crackerjack of a performance of the
orchestral suite from `Les Boreades,' a unique, absolutely wonderful work.

Fourteen movements in the 43-minute suite gave only a rough idea of the
opera, but everything in it was first-class, making the mystery of the work
even greater.  Although `Les Boreades' was rehearsed in Verailles in 1763,
to be given at the royal court, it was not performed, and then pretty much
disappeared, until its first stage performance in *1982*.  (McGegan is
generously suggesting in the program notes John Eliot Gardiner's Erato
recording for the whole opera.)

`Abaris, ou Les Boreades' is a complicated story about gods and nymphs and
the like, but the music is exciting, enchanting, peculiar:  while it holds
its own against Gluck or Handel, it also provides glimpses into the future,
more than a century ahead.  Some of the music has the intriguing ambiguity
of Berlioz, even of Wagner.

The `Boreades' Ouverture has Handel's stately sweep, but -- unlike the
generic `festive music' of the HWV 333 and 334 Concerto a due cori on the
first half of the program, played fabulously by the woodwinds and brass --
there is vigor, individuality, strength in Rameau that seems downright
strange in the mid-18th century.

A couple of enchanting Gavottes, lyrical Airs, and a closing Contredanse
that puts even the most riotous Last Night at the Proms to shame -- just
some of the riches of this score.

McGegan and the Philharmonia have long fused gloriously and tonight's
performance was just one in a series of truly great concerts.  What's new
and welcome is the audience response.  Philharmonia Baroque concerts are
now selling over 100 percent, with chairs added in the back.  Berkeley
police must have been jumpy over the noise pollution from the shouted
ovation that greeted the Rameau.  Flicka has done `Dardanus'; how about
a good mezzo part in `Boreades'?

Janos Gereben/SF
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