Couperin

L'influence de Francois Couperin sur ses contemporains et ses successeurs de l'école francaise de clavecin voire même à travers l'europe, tel est le programme éminement didactique de Davitt Moroney dans son pur style des années 1990, celui des émissions qu'il animait sur France Musiques.

The third in a series of four releases in the Complete Keyboard Works of François Couperin, this three-CD set includes Couperin's third book of harpsichord pieces. Featuring internationally acclaimed harpsichordist Davitt Moroney, this recording showcases two historically important instruments: the 1627 Ioannes Ruckers harpsichord and the 1768 Joannes Goermans harpsichord.

The music of Louis Couperin has never had quite the celebrity of that of his uncle François or of the other famous French keyboard composers of the eighteenth century. The harpsichord works here date from around 1650. They were thus contemporary with reign Mazarin, the courtier and prime minister who really ruled France, at least until the rebellion known as the Fronde curbed the power of the court. The lush booklet does an excellent job of placing Couperin against his cultural background, and really the disc is worth purchasing for the lavish illustrations of the period French harpsichord used (the small picture of the Greek god Pan above the keyboard is reproduced at full size inside, and it's fabulous).

AEOLUS presents the second volume of the Louis Couperin Edition with Bob van Asperen. The recording was made on the 1681 Vaudry harpsichord in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and is currently the only audio document available of this famous instrument. The SACD contains harpsichord suites composed by Louis Couperin, who lived in Paris in the 17th century. Among the pieces is the famous "Tombeau de Mr Blancrocher".

Kenneth Gilbert’s complete recording of François Couperin’s Pièces de clavecin in 1970 was much more than a pioneering venture; he offered interpretations as virtuosic as they were elegant – and on a historical harpsichord. This first volume, devoted to the first three Ordres of the Premier Livre, conveys the infinite nobility of the immediately recognisable language forged by the most poetic French composer of the Grand Siècle. A thrilling step back in time with this great artist, who was to exert considerable influence on an entire generation of harpsichordists that followed.

The harpsichord music of François Couperin (1668 –1733) is without question some of the instrument’s most important repertoire. His treatise L’art de toucher le clavecin [The Art of Harpsichord Playing, 1716] outlines the principles of good harpsichord playing, with information on ornaments, fingerings, and touch, and includes eight preludes and an Allemande. His four monumental volumes of harpsichord music contain over 230 individual pieces, and rare is the player who undertakes learning the entirety of this body of work. Davitt Moroney, a performer-scholar who has already recorded the complete works of Byrd and Louis Couperin, as well as the complete Well-Tempered Clavier, is currently recording these works for the Plectra label on magnificent antiques from the Flint Collection in Wilmington, Delaware.

Alexei Lubimov is a Russian pianist who also plays fortepiano and harpsichord. In his early years he studied at the Moscow Central Music School, and in 1963, entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with Heinrich Neuhaus and Lew Naumov. He developed a strong interest in Baroque music and 20th century modernist works. Lubimov gave the Soviet premieres of many western compositions, including pieces by Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, Terry Riley, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, which brought censorship from the Soviet authorities. For a number of years he was prevented from traveling outside the Soviet Union. Turning to his interest in period instruments and authentic performance practices, he founded the Moscow Baroque Quartet and co-founded the Moscow Chamber Academy with Tatiana Grindenko.

The delightful scenario of L'Apothéose de Lully imagines the composer Lully, one of François Couperin s forebears at the court of Louis XIV, being wafted up to Mount Parnassus by Apollo. There, he meets the Italian muses, and the music becomes that synthesis of the French and Italian styles which Couperin so admired. All of this is captured with grace in Arcangelo's playing under its founder, Jonathan Cohen. The other work on the disc is the sacred Leçons de ténèbres, sung with purity by sopranos Katherine Watson and Anna Dennis and revealing another side to Couperin's art.

The Leçons de Ténèbres (Lessons of Darkness) became a favourite theme for musical compositions in the middle of the 17th century. Michel Lambert was the first French musician to compose a cycle in 1662, quickly followed by Charpentier and Lalande. But the most famous - and the first to have attracted the public of today and to be recorded - are those of François Couperin, dated 1714.