For her new recording, entitled Or (light), cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton has devised a two-part narrative, "a series of freeze frames, like incursions into time": first, Couperin's Les le�ons de t�n�bres or the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah. Prophecies are created in the time before. Before destruction and tears: "We hear the prophet's song of lamentation, although the possibility that this might not come to pass still exists." Then comes "our time": "Vivaldi's dramatic power brings us face to face with the present. He says, 'It's here now.'" Sonia has chosen several excerpts from his operas and from two violin concertos. She transcribed most of the pieces in this programme for solo cello or two cellos, two voices that she plays herself. She also imagined bridges to other lights, those of Mahut's percussion and Marius Atherton's electric guitar and MS20 synthesiser.

For her new recording, entitled Or (light), cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton has devised a two-part narrative, "like freeze frames, like incursions into time": first, Couperin's Les le�ons de t�n�bres or the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah. Prophecies are the time before. Before destruction and tears: "We hear the song of the prophet lamenting, but the possibility that this will not happen still exists." Then comes "our time": "With his dramatic force, Vivaldi confronts us with our present. He says, 'This is now.'" Sonia has chosen several excerpts from operas as well as two violin concertos. She transcribed most of the pieces in this programme for solo cello or two cellos, two voices that she plays herself. She also imagined bridges to other lights, those of Mahut's percussion and Marius Atherton's electric guitar and MS20 synthesiser.

This live recording immortalizes Christophe Rousset's performance at the Fundacion Juan March in Madrid on January 8, 2025, a featured event in the Earning a Living concert series. Francois Couperin's keyboard compositions illuminate the role of royal patronage as the modus vivendi for musicians of the Early Modern period. Couperin's treatise, L'Art de Toucher le Clavecin, is here interwoven with a selection of his Pieces de clavecin, giving rise to a portrait gallery in music, each inspired by anonymous figures who inhabited the French court. This set of pieces de caractere, whose allusive and encoded meanings remain largely enigmatic today, is presented in groupings by tonality, each offering a window into the refined world of Baroque palace life and it's intricate web of connections.

L'APOTHÉOSE DE LULLY, LECONS D

NEO - French Baroque Music and New Compositions�brings together French Baroque music and modern compositions. The album includes works by Jean-Fery Rebel, Francois Couperin, and Marin Marais, along with new pieces by Calliope Tsoupaki, Willem Wander van Nieuwkerk, and Torben Klaes. Recorded in Burgundy, musicians Saskia Coolen, Patrick Ayrton, and Rainer Zipperling (viola da gamba) blend historical and modern styles.

Music for Harpsichord

F. COUPERIN: LA SULTANNE JAY

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COUPERIN: CONCERTS ROYAUX, PIË

Couperin: Pieces de clavecin

Though Couperin was a contemporary of J.S. Bach his fashionable life at Versailles could serve to make that great German seem quite stodgy. Always at the forefront of taste Couperin's trendsetting is nowhere more evident than in his Les Nations an overtly French set of trio pieces played stylishly here by Musica ad Rhenum with Jed Wentz.

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François Couperin (1668-1733) was the most famous and prolific Claveciniste of the French Baroque, earning early on the title of “Le Grand”. + For this release, San Francisco based harpsichordist Katherine Roberts Perl has drawn upon Couperin’s later works, which are darker, dreamier and more reflective in tone. + Unknowingly, he is creating a pathway which will lead to the future of French keyboard music— to Faure, Debussy and Ravel.

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Francois Couperin once confessed that he preferred to perform his collection of chamber music on two harpsichords however this series is the only one in existance that does just that. Volume one of the harpsichord series received fantastic reviews - "The playing by harpsichordists Jochewed Schwarz and Emer Buckley is finely matched. Both blend well with each other and provide a strong, virile performance that brings the nuances and ornamets of Couperin's music to life. One can see through their interplay why the composer considered this his ideal performance medium..".

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François Couperin, the main representative of a dynasty that dominated French music from the 16th well into the first half of the 19th century. In 1726 Couperin published his own musical atlas. According to the most plausible reconstructions based on the surviving manuscripts, the author had picked up three sonatas from a series of six trio sonatas written on Corelli’s model of “sonata da chiesa” (four movements, typically alternating slow-fast-slow-fast). These three chosen works were renamed this way: La Pucelle became La Françoise, La Visionnaire turned into L’Espagnole, L’Astrée into La Piédmontoise. To these three works Couperin added a fourth, the most extended of all, called L’Imperiale. To each Sonata, he further added a French Suite whose length suited diplomatic protocols: eight dances each for France and Spain, nine for the Holy Roman Empire, six for Piedmont. In all, four ordres for those Catholic powers that, in a typically French-centred perspective, were considered natural allies in the effort to break the siege by a hostile geopolitical bloc: Anglican Great Britain, Lutheran Prussia and Sweden, Orthodox Russia. Couperin himself writes in the preface to L’Apothéose de Lully: “[...] the complete book of trios that I hope to publish next July (Les Nations), can be played on two harpsichords, as well as on any other instrument.

Acclaimed harpsichordist Guillermo Brachetta returns to Resonus to begin a major recording of the complete Pièces de Clavecin by the French Baroque master, François Couperin. Often wistful and valedictory in tone, the fourth and final book of this landmark collection of keyboard music was completed at the very end of Couperin’s life and in the grip of failing health. Containing many vivid musical representations of real characters, Couperin’s grace and elegance in writing for this instrument is evident to the very end. Guillermo Brachetta’s previous Resonus release featuring Concertos from JS Bach, WF Bach, and Carl Graun was widely applauded by audiences and critics alike.

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