Couperin Deuxieme Livre de Pieces de Clavecin Christophe Rousset

In his Second Book of harpsichord pieces, Couperin moves away from the suite form based on a collection of dance movements, to a new conception consisting of a collection of miniatures with fanciful nicknames, some of which are clear, and some of which remain a mystery to this day. Couperin loved the harpsichord–he wrote one of the definitive instructional manuals for the instrument–and this set also includes the eight Preludes that he included in his L'Art de toucher le clavecin. At the time these discs were first issued, it was clear that Christophe Rousset's survey of Couperin's complete keyboard works was setting new standards in this music. His playing is simply magnificent.

Couperin's First Book of harpsichord pieces is a sort of musical house cleaning, representing the publication of a large number of pre-existing works that had already achieved a measure of popularity in manuscript copies. Couperin followed up his success with three more books published at intervals until the very end of his life. Collectively, these 27 suites of pieces (which the composer called "ordres") represent the pinnacle of French keyboard music, and they had a huge influence on subsequent composers, right down to Debussy and Ravel in our century. Christophe Rousset's series is a landmark in Baroque keyboard performance, and a splendid tribute to one of the epoch's greatest masters.

François Couperin was the greatest keyboard composer of the French Baroque, and his achievement, in both quality and quantity, is comparable only to Scarlatti's and Bach's. His fourth (and last) book of harpsichord music was published in 1730, a few years before the composer's death, and it represents a summing up of his career as a composer for his favorite instrument. These eight suites (or "ordres") contain fewer works than in the earlier books, but each one is a gem. Christophe Rousset's performances are simply the finest available, both in terms of interpretation and sound. These two discs are a fitting conclusion to a sensational series.

Supreme among French composers of the Baroque era, François Couperin made his career at the court of Louis XIV. His creativity is manifest in his sacred music, chamber music and, above all, his abundant corpus of keyboard works, here presented complete in recordings by the harpsichordist Laurence Boulay in their first CD release. Interpretations on the piano come from such figures as Marcelle Meyer and Georges Cziffra, while other contributors to this collection, representing diverse schools of performance, include William Christie, Christophe Rousset and John Eliot Gardiner.