Duphly

Gustav Leonhardt (30 May 1928 – 16 January 2012) was a Dutch keyboard player, conductor, musicologist, teacher and editor. He was a leading figure in the movement to perform music on period instruments. Leonhardt professionally played many instruments, including the harpsichord, pipe organ, claviorganum (a combination of harpsichord and organ), clavichord, fortepiano and piano. He also conducted orchestras and choruses.

Jacques Duphly is best known to harpsichordists for the four collections of harpsichord pieces he published in Paris between 1744 and 1768. These are spirited and pungent works, finely crafted in the tradition of Francois Couperin (in the Rondeau in D minor Duphly pays homage to Les Barricades mysterieuses) and emboldened by the manner of the Forquerays (in La Felix as well as La Forqueray). Mitzi Meyerson understands and relishes this music, with its beguiling sequences: her performances are arresting and delightfully unpredictable.

2015 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of French composer Jacques Duphly. Duphly’s life bookended the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI: He was born in Rouen on January 12, 1715, the year the Sun King Louis XIV died, and he himself died in Paris, the day after the storming of the Bastille, on July 15, 1789. Duphly’s works comprise four volumes of harpsichord pieces recorded here by Canadian harpsichordist Yves-G. Préfontaine. This release includes a large selection of Duphly’s works on a double CD box-set.

L'ornementation réalisée avec soin, l'équilibre assuré des formes, l'interprétation loyale et probe n'affrontent que la meilleure concurrence d'autres illustres confrères qui ont abordé Duphly dans diverses anthologies. Ainsi "Les Grâces", avec leurs notes graves surpointées (« il faut les passer avant celles du dessus » précise la partition, créant un expressif effet de retard à la main droite), trouvent-elles un surcroît de sensibilité sous les doigts d'un Gustav Leonhardt ; l'instrument ici utilisé (un Kroll de 1774) manque un rien de finesse pour restituer les charmes subtils de ces trois portraits mythologiques.

The critics are highly enthusiastic about the young, successful guitarist Raphaël Feuillâtre. "One of the most exciting concert guitarists of his generation," is how Guitar Salon International judges him, while Classical Guitar calls him "a fantastically versatile and sensitive performer." Feuillâtre celebrated his international breakthrough in 2018 as winner of the prestigious international competition of the "Guitar Foundation of America". With his debut on Deutsche Grammophon, he aims to share his love of Baroque music.

Although now faded into obscurity, Jacques Duphly was one of the most prominent French harpsichordists of his time, famed for his excellent teaching skills and known for his enviable connections with the French aristocracy. His keyboard works are a veritable treasure trove of music for harpsichord lovers; despite having been an organist in his youth, he soon realised that his talents lay with the smaller keyboard instrument, and he moved from Rouen to Paris to make best use of his skills.

In nearly all his pieces, Duphly presents two contrasting images—the bold and brazen virtuoso, and the wistful dreamer. The one exploits the compass of the harpsichord with scales and dense chords while the other enchants with delicately voiced textures. Only occasionally, as in pieces such as the fiercely passionate ''Medee'', or the elegant ''Les Graces'', does one mood prevail. Nimbly shifting back and forth between these extremes within pieces (as, for example in ''La larare'' or ''La d'Hericourt'') and between them presents a formidable challenge to any performer.

Remarquable programme qui confronte quatre merveilles de l'enfant Mozart composées lors de son premier séjour à Paris, avec des pièces du troisième livre pour clavecin avec accompagnement violon ad libitum de cet admirable Duphly que le grand Leonhardt nous a fait rencontrer salle Gaveau il y a déjà une trentaine d'années ; et les deux interprètes sont exquises - ce qui est l'approche nécessaire quand il s'agit de courir après cette musique ancienne, pour laquelle il nous faut réapprendre une certaine qualité d'âme. Et ce qui n'est pas qu'accessoire, l'instrument à clavier est superbe. Un fort beau disque.

Jacques Duphly is remembered not so much as a composer, but as one of the best harpsichord teachers and performers in Paris during the instrument’s “Golden Age”. His extant oeuvre consists of only four books of harpsichord music (52 compositions in all), technically adept and often challenging works that specialists have tended to regard more as teaching aids than as original, innovative contributions to the literature.

Jacques Duphly (1715-1789) was the last of the great French clavecinists, a student of D’Agincourt and a contemporary of Corrette, de Mondonville, Daquin, Dandrieu, Boismortier, and especially François Couperin and Rameau, whose music Du Phly’s high-Baroque / gallant style perhaps most closely resembles. Du Phly early gained an outstanding reputation, with Couperin and Balbastre, as an esteemed teacher. He was cited by Rousseau as “an excellent master of the harpsichord, especially in the perfection of ‘le doigte’ … consisting in general of a soft, light, and regular movement”. P.-L. Daquin, wrote in 1753 that “one discerns a great deal of ‘lightness in his touch,’ and ‘a certain languor,’ which, ‘sustained by ornamentation’ (graces), marvelously renders the characters of his pieces.”