Trace Moroney

William Byrd - The Complete Keyboard Music - Davitt Moroney (1999) {7CD Set, Hyperion CDA66551/7}
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© 1999 Hyperion Records | CDA66551/7
Classical / Renaissance / Period Instruments

The Gramophone Award-winning artist, Davitt Moroney has spent more than fifteen years planning this momentous project and Hyperion are proud to be able to bring Davitt’s wealth of expertise and musicianship to the label. As an authentic complete survey of this music, six different instruments have been used for the recording – two different harpsichords, muselar virginal, clavichord, chamber organ, and the Ahrend organ at L’Église-Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, France (where the huge and high nave creates an echo that lasts for nearly fifteen seconds, not unlike the acoustic at Lincoln Cathedral where Byrd was the organist and master of the choristers).

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.

Bach's first biographer, Forkel, noted that the violin writing of the Sonatas, BWV1014-19 required a master to play it. Bach, he said, knew all the possibilities of the instrument sparing it as little as he spared the harpsichord. Tie significant departure from baroque custom in these six sonatas is Bach's treatment of the harpsichord as an obbligato instrument, thereby making both players responsible for the thematic development. John Holloway and Davitt Moroney have set up a musically rewarding partnership in these brilliantly inventive works, furthermore adding to their programme the two lovely sonatas for violin and continuo long attributed to Bach, and justly so. In both of them they are joined by Susan Sheppard (continuo cello).

John Holloway and Davitt Moroney have set up a musically rewarding partnership in these brilliantly inventive works, furthermore adding to their programme the two lovely sonatas for violin and continuo long attributed to Bach, and justly so. In both of them they are joined by Susan Sheppard (continuo cello). For these sonatas Moroney has preferred a chamber organ to a harpsichord.

Bach's first biographer, Forkel, noted that the violin writing of the Sonatas, BWV1014-19 required a master to play it. Bach, he said, knew all the possibilities of the instrument sparing it as little as he spared the harpsichord. Tie significant departure from baroque custom in these six sonatas is Bach's treatment of the harpsichord as an obbligato instrument, thereby making both players responsible for the thematic development. John Holloway and Davitt Moroney have set up a musically rewarding partnership in these brilliantly inventive works, furthermore adding to their programme the two lovely sonatas for violin and continuo long attributed to Bach, and justly so. In both of them they are joined by Susan Sheppard (continuo cello).