Jean Rondeau

Jean Rondeau – Scarlatti: Sonatas (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:59 minutes | 1,71 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Warner Classics

The award-winning keyboardist Jean Rondeau performs Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti: Jean Rondeau studied harpsichord with Blandine Verlet for over ten years, followed by training in basso continuo, organ, piano, jazz and improvisation, and conducting. He pursued further studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, graduating with honours, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. In 2012, at just 21 years old, he became one of the youngest performers ever to take First Prize at the International Harpsichord Competition in Bruges (MAfestival 2012), also winning the EUBO Development Trust prize; an accolade bestowed on the most promising young musician of the European Union. The same year, he claimed second place in the Prague Spring International Harpsichord Competition (64th edition of the Festival, 2012), along with a nod for the best interpretation of the contemporary piece composed specially for that contest. In 2013, he also won the Prix des Radios Francophones Publiques. Rondeau is in demand for solo, chamber music and orchestral appearances throughout Europe and in the United States. He frequently performs with the Baroque quartet Nevermind. Quite apart from his activities as harpsichordist, he founded the ensemble Note Forget, presenting his own jazz-oriented compositions and improvisations on piano. Rondeau is signed to Erato as an exclusive recording artist.
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Jean Rondeau – Melancholy Grace (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:18:44 minutes | 2,88 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Warner Classics

“Melancholy” is the fil rouge of the new album of the French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau, with repertoire by European composers from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries including Rossi, Frescobaldi, and Dowland. It has been recorded on two harpsichords, one of which is a historical “Virginal” from 1527, one of the first harpsichords ever made, manufactured in Naples in 1527 and property of a private collection.
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Jean Rondeau – Dynastie: Bach Family Concertos (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:58 minutes | 1,51 GB | Genre: Classique
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Erato – Warner Classics

Jean Rondeau, the imaginative young French harpsichordist, describes the Bach family as “one of the great dynasties of western music”. Having devoted his first Erato disc, Imagine, to works by the towering Johann Sebastian, he now returns to Bach’s world for his third release, Dynastie, which complements concertos by Johann Sebastian with concertos by his three most famous sons, Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emmanuel and Johann Christian.

Rondeau has described JS Bach, who has been part of his life since his childhood, as “daunting like a mighty mountain”, but at the same time feels that “his music is so full of humility, so generous, that we have the right and the duty to play it, to share it, and to take the hand that he extends to us.”
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Jean Rondeau – Bach: Goldberg Variations (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:46:28 minutes | 2,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

“An ode to silence” is how harpsichordist Jean Rondeau has described Bach’s Goldberg Variations. “I feel they were written for silence, in the sense that they take the place of silence,” he says. “All Bach is there in the Goldberg Variations … all music is there … and I will no doubt spend my life working on them.” To prepare his interpretation he consulted an original printed edition of the work, containing Bach’s own markings and corrections. “Through delving into this precious musicological source, I was able to make what I felt to be the most authentic choices.” Rondeau performs the set of variations in its complete form, with the indicated repeats and with judicious insertion of moments of silence.
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Jean Rondeau – Bach: Imagine (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:24:34 minutes | 1,65 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Erato – Warner Classics

IMAGINE is the first Warner Classics release from the dynamic young French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau, who sees it as “an exploration of all the possibilities that lie in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and in the harpsichord”. Praised by radio station France Musique for his “maturity, fabulous touch and originality,” the multi-talented Rondeau feels that, as a young musician today, he has “an incredible opportunity to break out of the concert hall and meet the world”.

IMAGINE features one of Bach’s most celebrated harpsichord works, the Italian Concerto BWV 971, but it mainly comprises transcriptions of music that the composer conceived for other instruments: the violin, the lute and the flute, including the towering Chaconne in D Minor. “This isn’t a disc of transcriptions, though,” says Rondeau. “As its name suggests, it is about imagination – an exploration of all the possibilities that lie in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and in the harpsichord. And though it’s not making a direct link to John Lennon, it’s nice if the title of the CD calls him to mind.”
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Jean Rondeau – Gradus ad Parnassum (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:10 minutes | 1,63 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

The new album by French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau takes us to the summit of the Muses, the mythological Mount Parnassus. Under the title “Gradus ad Parnassum”, the early music star, who is as passionate as he is extravagant, presents original works and works he has arranged himself for his instrument, from the Renaissance master Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina to the classics Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to the dawn of modernism in the early 20th century – true to his attitude: “I don’t want to limit myself to just one repertoire or one era of music history
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Rameau & Royer – Vertigo – Jean Rondeau (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:14 minutes | 1,45 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | © Parlophone Records / Warner Music
Recorded: 17-22. V. 2015 – Chateau d’Assas, France

France’s leading young harpsichordist performs works by two masters of the French Baroque. No surprises there, perhaps … but the harpsichordist in question is Jean Rondeau and the album is called Vertigo. It conceives the harpsichord in vividly theatrical terms. Vertigo takes its name from a dramatic, rhapsodic piece by Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer, who, along with Jean-Philippe Rameau, forms the focus of this album. If Rameau (1683–1764) is the better-known composer today, especially admired for such operatic masterpieces as Hippolyte et Aricie and Platée, the younger Royer (1705–1755) was also a major figure in his time, rising to become master of music at the court of Louis XV. Both Rameau and Royer excelled in keyboard music and in works for the stage. As Jean Rondeau says: “These two illustrious composers battled for the top spot at the Opéra.” He describes them as “two magicians, two master architects, amongst the most wildly imaginative and brilliant of their era … Two composers who also tried to capture echoes of grand theatre with the palette offered by their keyboard.”

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