Hall Of Mirrors – Mishka Rushdie Momen

Mishka Rushdie Momen’s debut Hyperion album ‘Reformation’ topped the UK Classical Chart, persuading critics and listeners worldwide to embrace the rich sonorities of a modern grand piano in early works written originally for harpsichord. This culminated in a raft of rave reviews around the globe and the album’s selection as one of The Times’ Albums of the Year.

For this her second album, Mishka turns from England to France and jumps forward two generations to the court of Louis XIV and in particular to the music of Versailles. As a showcase of soft power, Versailles was unparalleled in the world, presenting French leadership manners, in horsemanship and in industries like glass-making, of which windows and mirrors of the famous ‘Galerie des Glaces’ bear eloquent witness even now. The Sun-King’s palace offered an inexhaustible cycle of concerts, dance and spectacle in which the King was no mere spectator but a dancer of the ballet and a capable musician across numerous instruments.

Mishka explores keyboard works by two acknowledged giants and one near-unknown. François Couperin was one of Louis XIV’s first new organists of the Royal Chapel, part of a dynasty that forms a kind of French counterpart to that of the Bach family in Germany. The music’s warmth, brilliant resonance and musical language, designed for the grand spaces of Versailles, make it eminently suitable for performance on a modern grand piano.