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Session Report: violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte on recording ‘Le Violon de Rameau’

2026-08-21T08:09:00

Session report (8)

Théotime Langlois de Swarte tells Harry White how Le Violon de Rameau, his new album with William Christie, restores the violin to the heart of the composer’s musical world

Jean-Philippe Rameau’s relationship with the violin is an intriguing paradox. Today, his name remains inextricably linked to opera, the keyboard and music theory. Yet one of the rare surviving paintings of the composer – Portrait de Jean-Philippe Rameau, attributed to André Joseph Aved and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon – depicts him not at the harpsichord but holding a violin. Rameau may have written nothing for solo violin with basso continuo, yet the instrument is an animating principle throughout his orchestration, especially in the dances of Les Indes galantes and Castor et Pollux, where, in the words of French violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte, it assumes ‘a centrally important role’…

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