François Couperin

These four portraits of an era, French suites, are each composed of five to seven pieces, creating moods and ambiances of many kinds. If King Louis the Great was captivated by their musicality filled with contrasts and tones, Baroque music lovers will be touched by the finesse and the authenticity of this interpretation.

Ravishing second release on The King’s Consort’s new classical label, VIVAT, features world-renowned British soprano Carolyn Sampson and outstanding Norwegian mezzo Marianne Beate Kielland in entrancingly evocative French Baroque music.

Couperin’s three “Leçons” for Holy Week are vividly atmospheric, highly coloured, richly dissonant, and deeply melancholy, presenting music of an intensity that is quiet unique in Baroque sacred repertoire. The third Leçon is an especial jewel, with gloriously intertwining vocal lines.

Alongside the three extraordinary “Leçons” come two further substantial vocal duets by Couperin: a joyous Easter motet and a fine setting of the Magnificat.

Full-length 79’40” disc also includes stunning solo instrumental tracks, with Gramophone award-winning viol player Susanne Heinrich performing music by Marin Marais and Monsieur de Ste-Colombe (composers featured in the film “Tous les Matins du Monde”).

Recorded at “low” French baroque pitch, A=392, giving unparalleled richness to the vocal and instrumental sonorities.

High quality documentation, first-rate engineering.

“The King’s Consort are set to re-enter the recording catalogue” (Gramophone)

The confidential, almost secretive, musical world of François Couperin is known through the innumerable emotional connections made in his harpsichord works, but he was also able to produce the same sensations when writing for the viola da gamba. Paolo Pandolfo has brought together on one new album on Glossa these works of Couperin’s full maturity, demonstrating the composer’s spiritual and mischievous tendencies in equal measure (as well as his own mastery of the subtleties of the gamba).

As well as the Plainte from the Tenth Concert Royal, there are two full Concerts from the collection entitled Les Goûts Réunis which ask for two violas da gamba. These are included alongside what may have been Couperin’s final works, the two sets of the Pièces de violes which, being supplied with a figured bass, call upon for the involvement of other instruments such as theorbo and harpsichord.

Considered by the booklet essay writer, Philippe Beaussant, to be ranked as one of Couperin’s masterpieces, the second Suite (which lay undiscovered for almost 250 years) contains an astonishing pair of pieces called Pompe funèbre (Couperin’s musical testament?) and La Chemise blanche.

Paolo Pandolfo is joined in this recording – made in the French village of Rasteau – by a second gamba player in Amélie Chemin, as well as by frequent collaborators from recent years in Thomas Boysen (theorbo, Baroque guitar) and Markus Hünninger (harpsichord).

In this recording, Jean-Luc Ho pairs Bach's French Overture (Ouverture nach Französischer Art) with the Huitième Ordre, one of Couperin's most celebrated works. Both are played with the French art de toucher le clavecin (the art of playing the harpsichord), as expounded by Couperin and adopted by Bach, bringing to light the connection between these two masterpieces of the harpsichord repertoire.

François Couperin wrote some of France’s greatest music in the classical style. The Suites for Viola da gamba and Harpsichord are late works, published in 1728, and are perfect examples of his richly expressive style which here draws upon Italian models as well as, perhaps, celebrating another genius of the French school, Marin Marais, who had died in the year the Suites were published. Intense and passionate, the suites offer lyricism and virtuosity, Italian bravura and French richness. The last of Couperin’s harpsichord ordres (or suites) consists of four varied pieces, including Les 8570944 Chinois, an early example of interest in China in Western music.

Acclaimed American harpsichordist Andrew Appel here performs core repertoire for his instrument, that is by turns both elegant and dramatic.

Andrew Appel has embarked upon a project which will see him eventually record all of Couperin’s music for solo harpsichord, nine volumes in total of which this is Volume No.1.

Andrew Appel performs regularly as soloist and with his ensemble Four Nations throughout the United States and Europe, and is a member of the Smithsonian Players and Opera Lafayette. He has received much critical acclaim for his previous solo and ensemble recordings with Bridge Records and Gaudeamus.

The first album made by Jordi Savall for the Astrée label!

After Mr Marin Marais and Sainte Colombe, Jordi Savall presents another summit of music for viola da gamba in his Heritage collection. This 1975 disc confirmed Couperin as a master, if proof were needed, and of his affinitities with the masters of French music.

This remastered high definition multi-channel SACD and very informative booklet complete this reissue of a must-have of the Savall oeuvre.

London Baroque presents a disc charting the Trio Sonata in 18th-century France - a musical environment undergoing rapid changes following the death of Louis XIV in 1715.

In 1725 François Couperin published his Apothéose de Lulli, advocating a fusion of Italian and French styles, and the following year saw the collection Les Nations, which included L’Impériale recorded here.

Jean-Marie Leclair and his colleague (and great rival) Jean-Pierre Guignon took the idea one step further. Both were fêted violinists as well as composers, and wrote music mainly for their own instrument in an often virtuosic style.

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier was not known as a performer, and composed a large number of small-scale works aimed at wealthy amateurs.

Blandine Verlet is now one of the last living legends of the harpsichord. After a few years of absence, she has joined the label Aparté with a programme dedicated to Francois Couperin's harpsichord music, recorded on a sumptuous Hemsch of 1751 upon which she already performed Goldberg Variations in 1993. Throughout these pieces with evocative titles (Les Amusements, the Raphaèle, the delights, the Poppies, the Wandering Shadows ..) she reveals an artist with a voice more than inspired, powerful and constantly renewed.

The cover of the disc is a portrait of Blandine Verlet by Craig Hanna. A real event!