French Harpsichord Music

Christophe Rousset is one of the finest and most exciting harpsichordists, and as a conductor is a leader in the late 20th century revival of French Baroque music. For the tuning enthusiasts out there, this CD was recorded on a 1751 Henri Hemsch (Paris) harpsichord tuned in Werckmeister III temperament.

Sophie Yates’s 1993 debut CD offered a fine selection of French Baroque harpsichord music. For this second disc she has turned her attention south to Spain and Portugal and back to the 16th as well as 17th century. The repertoire, though less familiar, is certainly attractive – delightful examples of tiento and diferencias by Cabezón; Coelho’s compelling Segunda Susana; the ornate traceries of Ximénez and Cabanilles. And all played with a graceful eloquence that is quietly impressive.

The four suites by Jean-Henri D’Anglebert on this CD come from the Pièces de clavecin, his only published work, which appeared just two years before he died in 1691. D’Anglebert was a pioneer of French harpsichord music, and his suites are bold, forceful and highly ornamented, with little of the tripping charm that later characterised the French style. Here they are played superbly by Kenneth Gilbert, on a 1768 Albert Delin harpsichord, and complemented by brief pieces from Chambonnières, Dumont and Louis Couperin.

Acclaimed French harpsichord player Christophe Rousset seems to have made only this one CD of Domenico Scarlatti sonatas to date. All but the last 4 sonatas were performed on a single manual Portuguese instrument dating from 1785. It has a silent action, a pungent bass and spicy, rich sonorities right up to the top treble. The other instrument has two manuals and, dating from 1756 England, is closer in time to Scarlatti's own era. Rousset makes good use of the resources the two manuals provide, and accidentally kicks the wooden casing, in K 140. Like most keyboard players who enjoy a challenge, he has a high old time with the frenetic repetitions and hand crossings in K 141 (which M.Argerich did on piano in a famous Youtube video btw)

French Baroque: Versailles 1700-1740 album by Dorothee Oberlinger was released Mar 01, 2011 on the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi label.

The Dutch don't treat their composers very well. Many years ago Dutch and Belgian radio started a project about Carolus Hacquart, but although a number of his works were recorded, very few of them ever made it to disc, and since things have remained quiet around this composer. There is no reason to ignore him as his music is of very good quality; something the present disc goes to prove.It seems Hacquart was born around 1643 in Brughes and received his first musical education as a choirboy there and later in Ghent. He studied viola da gamba and organ and moved to the United Dutch Provinces, first to Rotterdam, where he worked as a freelance musician and music teacher.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.