Video of the week: Mishka Rushdie Momen plays Rameau’s ‘Le rappel des oiseaux’

Birdsong meets the keyboard in this week’s video, drawn from the British pianist’s latest album, Hall of Mirrors.

In Le rappel des oiseaux, Jean-Philippe Rameau turns the keyboard into a lively exchange of bird calls. Short, answering phrases and fluttering ornaments evoke the natural world in one of the most distinctive character pieces from his Suite in E minor.

The piece is thought to have been inspired by Rameau’s friendship with the Jesuit scholar Père Castel, with whom he discussed birdsong. Its title is often translated as ‘The conference of the birds’: an apt image for music built around calls and responses.

Mishka Rushdie Momen performs the work on a modern grand piano, bringing music originally written for the harpsichord into a different sound world. The video accompanies Hall of Mirrors, her second album for Hyperion, released on 11 September 2026.

Inspired by Versailles and the cultural world of Louis XIV, the recording brings together keyboard works by Rameau, François Couperin and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre. The latter’s Suite in G minor gives a prominent place to a pioneering French composer whose music remains less familiar than that of her male contemporaries.

Listen to the album: Hall of Mirrors – Mishka Rushdie Momen