Armand-Louis Couperin was the nephew of François Couperin, and part of a family which was the dominant musical dynasty in France for around two hundred and fifty years. The music of the younger Couperin is difficult to categorize, since he was writing at a time between the decorative aesthetic of the high baroque and the beginning of the true classical style. Sophie Yates relishes the music of this period, for to her, contained in the rococo period are the elements of the baroque, classical and even romantic styles in embryo, making, she says, 'a rich and unpredictable mixture of delights.'

François Couperin (1668-1733) published his first book of Pièces de Clavecin-containing five suites or, as he called them, Ordres, for harpsichord-in 1713. This was followed by his harpsichord method L'Art de toucher le Clavecin in 1716, and a second book of harpsichord pieces in 1717 (two more books followed in 1722 and 1730). L'Art de toucher le Clavecin in a way ties the first two books of Pièces de Clavecin together, as it includes eight Préludes for some of their suites. While we still do encounter traditional dance movements in these Ordres, they are interspersed with characterful, poetic and brilliantly creative compositions with (often whimsical) character titles. Some of these titles represent an idea Couperin had in mind when composing the piece. Others are portraits of living persons, known to his contemporaries. This release presents selections from three Ordres from the first and second books of Pièces de Clavecin, each preceded by the matching Prélude from L'Art de toucher le Clavecin in the same key. The Premier Prélude in C major is a sunny, carefree piece in which Couperin exploits his signature style luthé, where the bass note provides the beat, or cadence, and the upper voices fill in the chord in an arpeggiation. The gloomy Troisiême Ordre in C minor is a reflection on the French court's devastating year of 1712, when three Dauphins died in short succession. The selection presented here contains several pieces written in the tradition of the musical Tombeau, although not titled as such.

Frédérick Haas writes: "Couperin is one of the three or four greatest composers to have devoted themselves completely to the harpsichord. He is the greatest poet of all. Returning to Couperin under the protective auspices of the Royaumont Foundation was pure happiness. It is like returning to the beloved places of a blissful childhood - but in the meantime the taste, the discernment has been refined. To play it with the fabulous Hemsch of 1751 seems to me an ever more miraculous experience." Frédérick Haas began playing harpsichord at the age of 12. He was awarded solo diplomas at both the Sweelinck Conservatorium of Amsterdam and the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles, in addition to a Musicology degree from the Sorbonne. He is professor of harpsichord at the Royal Conservatorium of Brussels.

Pianist Luisa Imorde has a pattern in her releases: she frequently juxtaposes the repertoire of two composers. On her well received last album she presented works by Bach and Kapustin. Her newest release "Polychromie" contrasts the preludes by Couperin with pieces from Messiaen, pointing out the variety of colors within the music of these two different epochs. "Luisa Imorde couples a mature playing technique with an unbridled passion for the piece she is playing and the instrument she is playing it on, resulting in an auditory experience that kindles the spirit and sets the heart aflame" – said the Süddeutsche Zeitung of the young German pianist’s art.

To the Couperin dynasty we owe the success of music for harpsichord. The figure of Louis languished in obscurity over many years and only recently, through musicological research, it has been possible to recognize his genius. The story differs with François the Great, the leading member of the dynasty, whose compositional style revolves around his own sentence: “I confess that I far prefer what moves me to what surprises me.” Luigi Chiarizia is a harpsichordist, organist and composer. Born from generations of artists, he began studying music at the age of six, studying first with the masters Rendine, Nenna, Herrera, and Carnini, later with Mencoboni, Suzzani and Pappagallo. He graduated with honors in organ and organ composition in Pescara.

Although Couperin is best known today as a composer of harpsichord music, he remained deeply involved in chamber music throughout his career. Les Nations is a vast project in which the virtues of both the French and Italian styles are set next to each other. Each of the four ordres celebrates a Catholic power of Europe – France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Savoy dynasty of Piedmont – and each is a combination of an Italianate trio sonata, with its free-form virtuosity, and a large-scale and elaborate French dance suite. Juilliard Baroque brings together some of the world’s most respected and accomplished early music instrumentalists for this invigorating program.

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Review:

All eight players are totally absorbed in the style. Their often dense ornamentation never sounds calculated or contrived; their rhythmic flow in slower movements has a captivating insouciance, relaxed, gently fluid. This is French playing that would be hard to better.

– BBC Music Magazine

Towards the end of the renowned Couperin dynasty, Armand-Louis was born in 1727 as the nephew of François Couperin (‘le grand’), and in due course he became titulaire organist at the Église Saint-Gervais in the Marais district of Paris, as generations of Couperins in a continuous sequence stretching back to 1653. In 1752 he married Elisabeth-Antoinette Blanchet, daughter of the harpsichord-maker François-Étienne Blanchet and herself the third generation of a family of musicians and luthiers. They had four children, three of whom lived to maturity and became musicians, including their son Pierre, who succeeded Armand-Louis at Saint- Gervais after a tragic accident with a runaway horse brought about the composer’s premature end in 1789. It has been suggested that personal modesty, as well as the demands of a schedule which saw him in demand at churches across Paris, was the cause of Armand-Louis publishing so little of his music. Certainly it was highly esteemed during his lifetime. These Pièces de Clavecin were published in 1751 as his ‘Opus 1’ and succeeded only by lesser-known collections of violin sonatas and trios. The Pièces de clavecin deserve consideration alongside the viol fantazias of Purcell and the Lachrymae of Dowland for their rich, saturated exploitation of an idiom passed its high noon. The collection is divided into two parts by key, G major/minor and B flat major/minor. The titles allude to friends and well-known figures of the time, and much is lost or rather buried within and between the notes in this kind of portraiture, yet the pieces spring to life in the right hands.

Careful examination of the manuscript sources of the harpsichord pieces of the ancestors of Francois Couperin ‘Le Grand’ reveals that nowhere are these compositions indisputably attributed to one of the three brothers Louis, Francois and Charles, born in Chaumes-en-Brie in 1626, 1630 and 1638. In these sources, the signatures mention an enigmatic ‘Monsieur Couperin’. The question of the authorship of all these compositions thus remains open. What is certain is that, for various reasons, Louis, who died in 1661, cannot under any circumstances be the composer of all the pieces in the corpus generally attributed to him. Which pieces can be restored to Charles and perhaps Francois, who died in 1679 and 1701 respectively? It is this riddle, worthy of a detective story, that this recording attempts to solve...

This release, La Raphaèle: The Art of François Couperin, pays homage to the Italian keyboard master long venerated by the Parisian Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. This reverence also rang true of François Couperin as a musical creator, who was clearly struck by Raphael's art, and so named the first movement of his Huitième Ordre's majestic opening allemande after the artist. World-renowned harpsichordist Joyce Lindorff recreates Couperin's L'Art de Toucher le Clavecin, Sixième Ordre, and Huitième Ordre with exquisite musicianship honed over four decades of researching and studying the styles and methods of the most famous keyboard composers of the 17th through 18th centuries. She is Professor of Keyboard Studies at Temple University where she has taught historical keyboards and performance practice for the past twenty years. In addition to teaching, she has performed across the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, and China, and has received solo recitalist awards from the Pro Musicis Foundation of France and the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States.

Two-time Grammy Award-nominated harpsichordist Jory Vinikour plays historically groundbreaking works by François Couperin (1668–1733) on an album comprising three inventive Couperin suites — the composer called them “Ordres” — combining traditional French Baroque dance movements with witty and atmospheric character pieces — miniature tone poems for solo harpsichord. Couperin’s suites “are elegantly composed, concealing a complex, allusive and varied emotional world behind their highly wrought surface” (Norton Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music). Chicago-born, French-trained harpsichordist Vinikour is especially enamored of Couperin’s Ordres Nos. 6, 7, and 8, calling them “remarkable” for their harmonically driven melodic invention and atmospheric unity within each suite. Highlights include the celebrated Les Baricades Mistérieuses from Ordre No. 6, which England’s The Guardian calls “shimmering, kaleidoscopic and seductive, a sonic trompe l’oeil.” The compelling Les Amusemens from Ordre No. 7 is irresistibly sweet and melancholic. Order No. 8 offers masterful examples of established forms, culminating with a dramatic Passacaille.

REVIEWS:

L’Unique presents all the wit and melancholy of Vinikour’s distinctive interpretations of the sixth, seventh, and eighth suites.

– BBC Radio 3 Record Review Extra

Playfully and decorously brought music to life by American harpsichordist Jory Vinikour. The recording places the instrument in a really lifelike perspective.

– BBC Record Review

Harpsichord friends had to wait a long time for this fourth album and the conclusion of the complete harpsichord works of Louis Couperin (a fifth organ volume is still in preparation). On the fantastic original “Velen” Ruckers harpsichord, recorded in a church on the Lower Rhine, Bob van Aspern shows with his inimitably flexible and colorful playing why this repertoire is so loved by connoisseurs. The musical proximity to Johann Jacob Froberger and the Parisian colleagues is not only to be heard, but also described and elucidated by Bob van Aspern in the as always comprehensive booklet – even several works by Parisian “guest composers” are included as in the previous volumes.

Following on the success of their widely acclaimed Music & Arts release J.S. Bach: Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord, Stephen Schultz (Baroque flute) and Jory Vinikour (harpsichord) are joined by Alexa Haynes-Pilon (viola da gamba), and Mindy Rosenfeld (Baroque flute) in superlative performances of François Couperin’s four Concerts Royaux; works which stand among the pinnacles of the Golden Age that was French music during the reign of Louis XIV. This state-of-the-art recording was produced and engineered at Skywalker Sound by two-time Grammy Award winner Jack Vad (2012, 2021).

REVIEWS:

This set is essential for its simple grace. The annotator, Gonzalo Ruiz (an excellent oboist who doesn’t play here), explains King Louis XIV’s restrictions on sharing this royal court music until he was old. He allowed it to be published just before he died, but Couperin had composed it many years earlier. There are four suites. Couperin didn’t specify the instrumentation for this chamber music beyond some general suggestions. Ensembles make their own arrangements to suit their personnel and strengths...Anything with theorbo or archlute usually pleases me with a satisfying low-bass crunch. But there is nothing wrong with this more sparing arrangement or performance by the Schultz team.

Some of the pieces are played entirely by Vinikour as harpsichord solos, or with his harpsichord starting them and other players soon joining in. Haynes-Pilon sometimes plays the bass line with her viol, sometimes up in the violin range. The two wooden flutes have beautifully pure tone, and Schultz and Rosenfeld phrase gracefully with them. The pieces sound splendid here as elegant and lightweight entertainment, of the kind that would soothe a stressed king and please his guests. It’s not too fast (like Musica ad Rhenum’s) or too stern (like Rousset’s), but just right.

-- American Record Guide

Johannes M. Bogner dedicates himself here to the famous Préludes non mesuré by Louis Couperin. These unrhythmic pieces represent the zenith of free playing on the keyboard instrument in the 17th century. Their enigmatic notation requires accomplished, but above all inspired, performers. In his recording, the musician used a copy of a harpsichord by Vincent Tibaut, which uses bird feathers as keels. Johannes Maria Bogner, born in Linz, is an Austrian classical harpsichordist and harpsichord teacher. Johannes Maria Bogner studied with Liselotte Brändle, Kenneth Gilbert and Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, USA, with Arthur Haas. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed with Camerata Salzburg, Musica Antiqua Köln and Les Musiciens de Louvre throughout Europe, the United States, Canada and Israel. Bogner has also been harpsichordist of L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra for 20 years - since its foundation - with whom he plays around the world.

For the first time ever in the history of piano recording, Pierre Chalmeau immersed himself into the fascinating world of Louis Couperin, François’ uncle. Louis Couperin is considered as a key figure and the founder of the French school of harpsichord. His Pièces de clavecin constitute the gem of 17th century French music. Introduced to the piano by his pianist and conductor father, Pierre Chalmeau began his training at the CNR in Paris where he obtained a first prize in piano and chamber music in 2002. In addition to his solo work, he performs in the Notamo Duo alongside clarinetist Carjez Gerretsen, wherein they explore the great German cycles.

Francois Couperin, known as ‘le grand’, won renown when, at the early age of 25 in 1693, he was appointed to a high position in Louis XIV’s private chapel. In the following years he compiled the core of his greatest works, the four monumental Pieces de clavecin, which represent the apex of his compositional mastery with a refined use of counterpoint and a galant taste for embellishments and rich, often subtly melancholic characterization. This album features eight preludes from Couperin’s L’Art de toucher le clavecin to create small suites that freely use pieces from the first two books of the Pieces de clavecin.