Keyboard Cubed is Cervetti’s second recording for Navona and takes the listener into a world of kinetic and emotionally charged sound forged from 3 keyboard instruments. Sometimes it is the pianoforte, the double keyboard of the harpsichord and the organ.

R E V I E W S:

"A highly visible figure as leader of the renowned English Consort for the past three decades and, in Canada, as the former music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Trevor Pinnock has recently defected from the podium to resume his career as a keyboard virtuoso with these brilliant performances on the 18th-century Goermans-Taskin French harpsichord from the collection of the University of Edinburgh. The generous selection of 80 minutes includes two 1728 Suites in A minor and E minor flanked by six selections (L’Entretien des Muses, Les Tourbillons, Les Cyclopes, L’Enharmonique, L’Egyptienne and La Poule) from Rameau’s most beguiling character pieces. Avie’s recording of this remarkably well-voiced instrument is exemplary. Special recognition is due to the exquisite tuning of the instrument in French unequal temperament by John Raymond, which allows us to truly appreciate the boldness of Rameau’s tonal excursions."
- Daniel Foley, TheWholeNote.com

You’ve doubtless been wondering about it for some time. Now that the English Consort has folded, what will Trevor Pinnock do? Well, worry no longer. This album provides the answer, at least in part: he’ll record. In a real way, this Rameau is a return to Pinnock’s roots, as he’d performed the Pièces de Clavecin en Concerts with the Gailliard Harpsichord Trio while in his teens, and recorded Rameau’s harpsichord works in the 1970s.

This latest release shows him in excellent form. “La poule” is attentive to rhythmic values, without pushing the poor fowl’s tempo immoderately. The subtle hesitancy at the beginning of each clucking phrase works well, in a piece that is more difficult to play correctly than it seems at first glance. Both the “Musette en Rondeau” and the famed “Tambourin” from the same suite have a folklike insistence on their respective drones that never gets in the way of the relentless but judicious momentum.

While the “Fanfarinette” is faster than that recorded so well by Sophie Yates (Chandos CHAN 0708) and less inclined to maintain the piece’s skipping rhythm, Pinnock still applies notes inégales extensively and to great effect at phrase starts and conclusions. “La triomphante” is moderate and brash, with the strumming effect subtly emphasized: occasionally in the bass chords, or in the figuration, or in the rhythm accorded the right-hand melody. Ornamentation is always sensibly selected.

Pinnock isn’t afraid to bring his own interpretations to the mix on occasion, which is a nice way of saying that at times he moves into areas that turn their back on tradition as it’s currently understood. Is this necessarily wrong? I think you risk the hazard of the die when you enter the game, but Pinnock’s perceptions are interesting, usually convincing, and never made me think for once that I had a party recording on my hands. The A-Minor Sarabande is one good example in the “interesting” camp. Taken at a relatively slow, steady tempo, the ornamentation is paced for a much faster piece. This focuses attention on the stately, gliding theme, though in some instances only the final note of the ornament registers. I don’t consider the results successful, but I can understand the reasoning behind the approach. More persuasive is Pinnock’s unusual handling of “La rappel des oiseaux.” The opening section and close are handled much quicker than usual, emphasizing the repetitive nature of the bird calls, while the middle section is taken slowly and freely, the better to emphasize the shifts in harmony. The harpsichordist makes use as well of his instrument’s 4? set of strings at the start to bring the music up an octave, then switches down to the 8? set for the central section, but only moves up an octave once more midway through the final section. It’s an imaginative effect, and one that again chips away at the prevailing myths that all harpsichords sound alike, and possess no variety of touch...

Pinnock’s harpsichord is a double-manual instrument by Goermans from 1764, significantly modified 20 years later by Taskin. It is a richly beautiful instrument, robust yet capable of delicacy, and caught to perfection with little action noise and just enough resonance to capture the bloom... This is a fine album, and one well worth your purchase.

Barry Brenesal, FANFARE

Gilbert Rowland is one of Europe's most senior and accomplished exponents of the harpsichord. Following his critically acclaimed 6-album series of the Harpischord Suites of Handel for Divine Art, he moved to the Athene imprint specializing now in baroque music and 'period' instruments for his well received album of Suites by Johann Mattheson. This 2-album set is the first volume in a projected complete survey of the Harpsichord Suites by Johann Jakob Froberger, whose organ and harpsichord music is individual in nature and ground breaking - he was one of the first composers to settle the 'dance-movement' style of Suite taken up by Couperin, Bach, and Handel among many others. There are 12 Suites in this collection. Gilbert Rowland plays a 2 manual French style harpsichord made by Andrew Wooderson after an instrument by Goemans (Paris, 1750).

During the reign of Le Roi Soleil Louis XIV, music played the fundamental role of defining and consolidating the centrality of power, both in the sphere of sacred music with the grand motets and in the sphere of opera with the comedies-ballets, tragedies-lyricas and operas-ballets by Lully, Charpentier, Delalande and Campra: music had to represent the grandeur and divine nature of the sovereign, the power and splendor of the French crown. This is the cultural and musical context of Francois D'Agincour. Born in Rouen in 1684, he studied in his home town until the age of 17 with Notre-Dame organist Jacques Boyvin. He continued his training probably with Lebegue in Paris, where he was employed as organist at Sainte Madeleine-en-la-Cite for five years. Appreciated and very prominent, in 1714 he became one of the four organists of the Chapelle royal at Versailles, replacing Louis Marchand. He then also took up the post at Saint Jean in Rouen in 1726 and spent the last thirty years of his life between Versailles and Rouen. The only printed collection published by him in 1733 contains 4 ordres for harpsichord, inspired by the descriptive nature of the titles and compositional style by those of Francois Couperin. Next to the dance forms of the suite emerge the pieces de caractere, most of which are rondeaux. The descriptive titles refer to single portraits (e.g., L'Empressee, La Pressante Angelique), double portraits, natural scenes, genre scenes, and places. Played on two different harpsichords, copies of a Hemsch and Dulcken instrument, by Marco Borghetto, who won First Prize at the Wanda Landowska Harpsichord Competition 2023.

A highly sought-after musician not only for his virtuosity and the subtlety of his playing, Luc Beauséjour is never short of ideas when it comes to offering music programs imbued with authenticity and refinement. For his new album, Le rappel des oiseaux, the harpsichordist proposes a selection of works by French composers inspired by birdsongs. The extreme diversity of timbre, tune, and rhythm found in birdsong has always fascinated musicians. Even when the creatures in question are out of sight, their twittering, warbling, and chirping fill the air with sweet and pleasant music, both under the morning sun and at nightfall.

Award winning American keyboard-player Glen Wilson follows up his acclaimed releases of Buxtehude' harpsichord music "strongly gestural and rhetorical", Couperin' Tombeau de M. de Blancrocher "considerable technical virtuosity", Farnaby' Harpsichord.

The intelligence, sensitivity, and innate musicality distinguishing violinist James Ehnes' terrific unaccompanied Bach carries over to his first volume of the composer's sonatas with harpsichord. What immediately strikes you is the ideal balance between Ehnes and harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour--not just sonically speaking, but in how they effortlessly proportion their phrases and perfectly synchronize trills, turns, and other ornaments. Beauséjour's discreet and effective registrations complement the subtle variations in Ehnes' tone, especially in slower, sustained writing (the quicker-than-usual A major sonata's Andante is a good example). Also notice how Ehnes manages to project a full, rounded, and beautiful tone even when he employs vibrato sparingly. In other words, Ehnes achieves an organic synthesis of period-instrument practice with the virtues of modern violin technique, all to the music's expressive, dance-oriented good. Among numerous world-class Bach violin sonata recordings of disparate stylistic stripes, Ehnes and Beauséjour deserve room at the top. May their second volume prove equally nourishing. [2/14/2005] --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Although a favoured student of J.S. Bach, Johann Ludwig Krebs didn’t see any substantial success in his own lifetime. More recent assessments have discovered a highly educated, enlightened and open minded musician who was clearly highly accomplished as a performer and demonstrating a fascinating synthesis of Baroque, Galant and Classical forms. Keyboardist Steven Devine begins a complete survey of Krebs’ significant contribution to the keyboard genre with this first of four volumes that shows the range of Krebs’ musical language.

Described as the ‘Pianists’ Old Testament’, The Well-Tempered Clavier is a collection of pieces of exceptional artistic quality. No other work from the baroque period has been as valued, performed and studied as this collection whose objectives were musical, theoretical and didactic.

Both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier feature a prelude and fugue in each of the 12 semitones of the chromatic scale, covering each of the 24 major and minor modes – a unique body of works. No two preludes or fugues are alike; they display the full range of contrapuntal devices, while the preludes offer an infinite variety of melodic, rhythmic and constructional possibilities. Each of these pieces demonstrates a mastery of counterpoint that never takes precedence over emotion, beauty and aesthetics. With the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Bach established himself as the unrivalled master of the fugue genre.

Following his recordings of Bach’s concertos for one and two harpsichords (BIS-2041, BIS 2051 and BIS-2481), which reviewers have praised for his unaffected playing and acute musicianship, Masato Suzuki now offers us his take on this Bach monument.

Acknowledged without reservation as the greatest composer working in England in the 18th century, Georg Frideric Handel is revered worldwide as a master composer. His Harpsichord Suites are among the finest instrumental works of the period, we are privileged to present exquisite performances by Gilbert Rowland, one of Europe's foremost harpsichordists.

"It is impossible to praise this new release too highly. The harpsichord, a copy of a two manual French harpsichord after Goermans (Paris 1750), built by Andrew Wooderson in 2005, is a lovely instrument. The combination of Handel, Gilbert Rowland, Wooderson’s fine harpsichord, the recording venue at Holy Trinity Church, Weston, Hertfordshire and the recording engineer John Taylor is unbeatable providing, as it does, a collection of these wonderful suites that I will return to again and again."

-- The Classical Reviewer

Christlieb Siegmund Binder (1723-1789) was a German composer, organist, and harpsichordist active in Dresden during the mid-18th century. He belonged to the musical circle surrounding the Saxon court, which at the time was a major cultural hub, closely tied to both German and Italian traditions. Though not as widely remembered as his contemporaries Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach or Johann Adolf Hasse, Binder's works reflect the stylistic shift from the late Baroque to the empfindsamer Stil and early Classicism. Among his surviving works, the Six Harpsichord Sonatas stand out as his most notable contribution to the keyboard repertoire. These pieces display a balance between contrapuntal craftsmanship and a more galant, expressive style. Unlike the ornate fugues and suites of the earlier Baroque, Binder's sonatas emphasize clear melodic lines, graceful ornamentation, and a lighter texture, qualities that aligned with the taste of Dresden's aristocratic audiences. Each sonata reveals Binder's sensitivity to expressive nuance. The slow movements often highlight a singing quality, echoing the influence of opera, while the faster movements showcase rhythmic vitality and elegant figurations well suited to the harpsichord's brilliance. Though less technically demanding than some of Domenico Scarlatti's sonatas, they nevertheless require finesse and attention to articulation, as the musical interest lies in subtle contrasts of mood and character. Binder's sonatas also provide a window into the transitional aesthetic of the 1740s and 1750s. They combine traces of learned counterpoint-expected from a Dresden organist trained in the Lutheran tradition-with the charm and immediacy of the galant style. In this sense, his music bridges the world of J.S. Bach with the more modern sensibilities of Haydn and Mozart. Played on a Mascheroni harpsichord by P. Taskin, 1769, by Paolo Gazzola. Born in Piacenza in 1992 he obtained a Master of arts in music performance in Organ at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana with Stefano Molardi.

BACH Concertos for Solo Harpsichord: BWV 972-93, 975-76, 978, 980 (after Vivaldi); 974 (after A. Marcello); 979 (after Torrelli); 981 (after B. Marcello); 977, 983, 986, 985 (after Telemann); 982, 984, 987 (after Ernst). Prelude and Fugue in a, BWV 894 • Elizabeth Farr (hpd) • NAXOS 8572006-07 (2 CDs: 150:35)


This recording hit me like a ton of bricks in three ways. First, there is the music itself, not actually by J.S. Bach but rather transcriptions he made for harpsichord of concertos by Vivaldi, Torelli, Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello, Johann Ernst, Telemann, and unknown composers, in addition to his own Prelude and Fugue in A Minor. Second, there is the extraordinarily high quality of Elizabeth Farr’s performances, dramatic, nuanced, and extraordinarily colorful. And third, there is the sound of the instrument, a rare Baroque-era harpsichord with a 16’ set of strings as well as damper and sustain pedals. When this CD first started pouring out of my speakers, I thought I was listening to Wanda Landowska in digital stereo. It turns out that such fabulous beasts did exist, after all, in the Baroque era, in fact from as far back as the 16th century. Well, well, well. It turns out that Landowska, who has been lambasted for more than half a century for her “grotesque,” “gargantuan-sounding” instruments, was on the right track after all. Not having an authentic instrument to play, she simply had Pleyel create one for her. Granted, it had a grand piano frame because she was a touring musician and even a newly minted harpsichord with 16’ strings would have gotten pummeled on trains, but the sound was not that far removed from this.


Farr is also an interesting annotator. In order to save space I refer you to her liner notes, which explain why Bach transcribed 22 concertos by primarily Italian composers for harpsichord (six of them are for two harpsichords). The key to the project was young Prince Johann Ernst, the nephew of Duke Wilhelm, who in fact composed three of the concertos transcribed here. The young prince, an outstanding musician, wanted them to play on his instrument. Bach was willing to oblige for one particular reason: By writing out these concertos he could study their composing methods, and apply what he learned to his own “Italianate” music.


Farr’s playing is in the style of Leonhardt and Kipnis, using a great deal of rubato—some of it obvious, some of it quite subtle—to break up the very regular rhythms. I love this style. It is antithetical to British harpsichordists like Trevor Pinnock (whom I also highly admire), but very much in line with the type of “hesitating” style that Bach himself later employed in so many solo harpsichord works, a style he undoubtedly picked up from his friend and older colleague Buxtehude. She also plays very dramatically—heavy chording and rich textures when emulating the full tutti of the orchestral passages, lighter and airier in slow movements and when emulating solo passages. This took me some getting used to, but I came to enjoy this approach.


Some listeners may feel cheated that only one work (the Prelude and Fugue) is actually by Bach, but as a compendium of Baroque style transcribed by a musical genius, played to perfection and stunningly recorded, this set is very highly recommended.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Jean-Baptiste Gravier, known as l'abbé Gravier, was a French Catholic priest, composer and organist. Born on 21 April 1723 in Lombez, he died on 22 November 1799 in Saintes. He lived and worked throughout his life in the Occitan region. From the few biographical notes available, we know that Gravier perfected his studies in Toulouse with the organist Jean-Charles Desforats (1690-1762) and was employed in various locations from 1741 to 1790 as organist in Auch, Bordeaux and Saintes. The brief interlude he spent in Paris in 1759 must have been important for his artistic career. The Six Sonates pour le Clavecin (1759) by Abbé Jean-Baptiste Gravier are among his most remarkable works and demonstrate his talent for the harpsichord. The sonatas are composed of several movements, typically three or four, alternating between fast and slow tempos. They show an openness to Italian music, with clear melodic lines and rich harmonies. Gravier was able to incorporate elements of virtuosity and personal expression into his compositions, making them both technically demanding and emotionally captivating. This is another enterprising recording by Fernando de Luca, who has done a great deal to revive forgotten names from 18th-century music with complete surveys of their music on Brilliant Classics, among them Dufour, Foucquet, Jollage and Siret. '[De Luca] thinks outside of the box, and he clearly is a man with discerning tastes. These extend to his playing, which is clear-headed and disciplined, but never rigid. "Charm" is such an overused word, but I cannot think of a better one to describe this music and these performances.' (Fanfare on the Jollage album, January 2024). Fernando de Luca plays a French harpsichord after Blanchet (1754).

An enterprising and convincing set of performances; Naxos rescues another neglected composer.

I was somewhat lukewarm about Elizabeth Farr’s recording of the Bach solo harpsichord concertos (Naxos 8.572006-7), largely because I found the use of the 16' stop on her Keith Hill harpsichord obtrusive. I ended that review by fearing that there would be an even greater problem with the use of such an instrument on this Balbastre recording, since, by Hill’s own admission “no French harpsichords with 16' stops remain from [this] time.”

Since writing that review, I have read another review of the Bach which doesn’t even mention the offending stop, so, clearly, not everyone is going to be troubled by it. Paradoxically, too, though I dislike its use in Bach, where there is some historical evidence to support its use, I was less unhappy to hear it employed for Balbastre, where the evidence is non-existent. De gustibus non est disputandum.

We aren’t exactly well off for recordings of Balbastre: there seems currently to be only one other recording completely dedicated to his music, a 2-CD set of what Glossa call his ‘Salon Music’, another recital of his keyboard music by Mitzi Meyerson (fortepiano and harpsichord, GCD921803), on which much of the music, including the Marche des Marseillois et Ça-ira from Elizabeth Farr’s recording, are duplicated. Otherwise, we have just odd pieces by him on collections, especially on anthologies of that French Christmas phenomenon the instrumental Noël.

Naxos have on their website an interview with Elizabeth Farr, headed ‘My passion is my profession’, in which she speaks of her marvel at the creativity and individuality of the music of the eighteenth century. I’m not sure that I find Balbastre’s music quite as individual as that – perhaps you have to know it as thoroughly as Farr clearly does to distinguish it from that of Rameau or François Couperin – but her performances certainly make a strong case for its inventiveness and attractiveness. The interview was conducted before she set down the recent Bach recording and this of Balbastre, but her love of his music and her understanding of it are apparent from the CDs.

I queried some of Farr’s tempi on the Bach CDs: by comparison with Robert Woolley on Hyperion, some of them sound rather erratic. I wonder if I would have been as critical if I had not had Woolley’s recordings of some of those works for comparison, though I note that the reviewer who seemed untroubled by the use of 16' tone also referred to the problematic tempi.

Not having heard any rival recordings of any significant portion of Balbastre’s repertoire, I can’t make comparisons as I did with Bach. I can only say that I found the playing here much more convincing than I did before. I do just note en passant, however, that Farr’s timings seem to differ from Meyerson’s, sometimes considerably slower, sometimes faster. The brief excerpts which are all that I have been able to hear from those Glossa CDs serve as a reminder that Meyerson alternates between the fortepiano and the harpsichord, which you may find makes for more variety; equally, you may be irritated by repeated change from one instrument to the other. Also, Farr plays the pieces in the order in which they appear in print; Meyerson rearranges them.

Two CDs of this repertoire may look like a case of over-egging the pudding, but I didn’t find it so. If you like the keyboard music of Rameau and Couperin, you should find these CDs to your liking. Indeed, the concluding tracks of CD1 (trs.13-16) offer music from Rameau’s 1748 opera Pygmalion, arranged by Balbastre for the keyboard. Such arrangements, like the wind-band conflations of Mozart’s operas, served as souvenirs for those who had heard the original and as tasters for those who had not. This is some of the most dramatic music on the CDs; the tone of the Overture is particularly well caught here.

Most of the rest of the music is as benign and affable as Balbastre’s second name would imply. I don’t wish to imply, however, that it sounds derivative or banal; as the notes point out, the French harpsichord tradition is modified by the influence of Scarlatti.

The pieces from Book I of the Pièces de clavecin are character portraits. The whole book is dedicated to his pupil Mme de la Caze and her portrait opens the collection and the first of these CDs. It’s a strong piece, though with moments of tenderness, and the contrast between it and its successor on track 2, la d’Héricourt, is well brought out by Farr. Indeed, such variety as there is in the music – probably more apparent to contemporaries than to modern listeners – is well conveyed in these performances.

The last of the aristocratic portraits here is la d’Esclignac of 1787 (CD1, tr.12). The revolution two years later put paid to Balbastre’s employment as a composer of salon pieces; he was to die in poverty ten years later. The final work on the second CD (tr.16) represents his attempt to come to terms with the new régime, a set of variations of the revolutionary tunes la Marseillaise and Ça ira (we will succeed). As played here, it makes a fine conclusion to a recommendable set; I was very happy to pardon the liberty which Elizabeth Farr admits in the notes of repeating la Marseillaise at the end. Meyerson plays the piece as written, which is less dramatic, though you may think her use here of the newer instrument, the fortepiano, more appropriate for music written after the demise of the ancien régime.

The Naxos recording is a little close for my liking, but it captures the big sound of the instrument well – at times in that final Marche the bass sonorities almost sound like those of a grand piano. The documentation is informative and readable and sets the seal on a recommendable pair of CDs.

-- Brian Wilson, MusicWeb International

“[Bach] speaks to us in his work in such clear terms that we may quite well call these fugues poems. (…) These have warmth, quiet joy, love. And running through all the poems, dressed in different guises, is the main theme, creating order, binding the work as a whole together: it is a safe bond in all its diversity. Over all lies the proximity of death.” (Enzio Forsblom)

In this new recording, Bach’s final magnum opus is played by Aapo Häkkinen on a harpsichord built in 1614 by Andreas Ruckers the Elder (1579–?1652) and which belonged to the composer John Blow (1649–1708), organist of Westminster Abbey and former teacher of Henry Purcell. A tradition exists that G.F. Handel had also played this harpsichord.