This is one of those albums that can be listened to on two levels: one for the enjoyment of the rich, heavily ornamented sound of Andrew Lawrence-King's Baroque triple harp (the term refers to the instrument's three rows of strings, a configuration that survives today in Welsh folk music), and one for the music involved and how it fit into the ...
Some of the Baroque releases on Canada's ATMA label have stuck close to established molds, but this one by the young Québécoise harpsichordist Catherine Perrin breaks them all. Perrin's career is unusual in itself; while many performers of early music stick to the specialized circles of players who do the same, Perrin has parallel careers as a ...
Even by the supremely high production standards of Alpha recordings, this issue is especially splendid. Entitled Versailles, L'ile enchantée, it fully lives up to its name. As directed by Skip Sempé, the widely varied program features music written for Louis XIV's pleasure palace, performed by the Capriccio Stravagante Orchestra with mezzo soprano ...
The music of Louis Couperin has never had quite the celebrity of that of his uncle François or of the other famous French keyboard composers of the eighteenth century. The harpsichord works here date from around 1650. They were thus contemporary with reign Mazarin, the courtier and prime minister who really ruled France, at least until the ...
The available recordings of French Baroque keyboard music tend to be programmed rather stolidly, with the performer running through published suites or other sets in order. Was the music of Couperin, say, played that way in its own time? This little disc by the veteran British-Canadian harpsichordist Colin Tilney is a good one to pick for an ...
Although he occupied the exalted position of harpsichordist among Louis XIV's celebrated group of chamber musicians, Jean-Henri d'Anglebert is now known for the most part only to specialists. Indeed, this may be the only album ever to boast a cover blurb by longtime Indiana University musicologist Willi Apel, a scholar who helped lay the ...
One of the great black holes in the history of Western music is the lack of roughly the first two centuries of harpsichord music from France, despite ample evidence that the tradition was flourishing well before its most famous exponent, François Couperin, took his place at the manuals. The reasons for this lapse are manifold, though a lack of ...
Quebecois harpsichordist Hank Knox makes a virtue out of the supposed shortcomings of the music of J. Henry d'Anglebert, a court composer at Versailles in the late seventeenth century. The harpsichord suite selections heard here were published in 1689, and they have neither the majesty of d'Anglebert's predecessors nor the intensity of his ...
Once again, Alpha has released a package that combines aesthetic edification with intellectual education, superlative performances with exquisite production values, sublime art with mundane commerce. The conceit here is Jean-Henri d'Anglebert's virtuosic and characterful harpsichord suites, as well as his arrangements of excerpts from Lully's ...
Alpha Productions' L'Astrée, performed by the early music ensemble Faenza under the direction of Marco Horvat, presents a musical counterpoint to the early seventeenth century French novel The Two Faces of Astrée by Honoré d'Urfé, published in five parts between 1607 and 1628; its author -- a gentleman soldier -- died in battle before the book ...
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