Les Maîtres Du Clavecin Français – Svitlana Shabaltina

Among the several “golden ages” of Western music, the French Baroque is one of the most important; within it, the repertoire and style of the keyboard school is a standalone. This Da Vinci Classics album offers a stimulating and enticing panorama on the styles, genres, ideas and perspective of the French keyboard school in the Baroque era. Similar to J. S. Bach, with whom he allegedly had to compete at a kind of musical duel, Louis Marchand was best known by his contemporaries as an unrivalled master at the organ, and only secondarily as a composer and a performer of other instruments, including the harpsichord. The roots of his art can be found in an earlier generation, that of Louis Couperin, who belonged in one of the most important families of musicians in the French Baroque, and who implemented the creation of non-measured preludes for the harpsichord. Other pieces, originally written for small chamber ensembles by Jean-Philippe Rameau are offered here in arrangements by celebrated harpsichordist Siegbert Rampe. Works by François Couperin and Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer enrich the album with picturesque evocations of Carnival or Turkish marches, whilst Armand-Louis Couperin’s L’Affligée offers a poignant view of Baroque melancholy.