French keyboard music, known and unknown

The four recordings of French Baroque keyboard music reviewed here feature a younger generation of players who have been pupils of such personalities as Kenneth Gilbert and Ton Koopman. Most are also very fine researchers, and one, interestingly, combines performing with a career as a journalist. As a whole, the discs contain a good range of approaches to the selection of works, instrumentation and performance attitude. There is a notable inclusion of works by composers of more humble origins hitherto familiar only to musicologists, contrasted with a fresh take on François Couperin's harpsichord pieces, arguably the flagship of the French repertory and already honoured with numerous recordings.

Louis Marchand is now almost remembered more for his violence and recklessness than for his music, and only a very small portion of his keyboard works, many of which were probably improvised and never written down, survives. Anne Chapelin's idea of putting together his harpsichord and organ music in a single album, entitled Marchand: Pièces pour orgue et clavecin (VMS 160, rec 2005, 78'), neatly encapsulates Marchand's contribution to the keyboard. The disc contains all the composer's published harpsichord pieces (two suites and La Vénitienne), a selection of his organ music, and the Te Deum for organ and voice. For the harpsichord repertory Chapelin has appropriately chosen a late 17th-century prototype instrument that is a fine copy by Marc Fontaine of a Vincent Tibaut harpsichord. Chapelin's playing is mostly very sensitive and refined, although Marchand's fiery personality comes out only briefly, such as in the D minor Chaconne. Interestingly, a quite different character emerges in Marchand's organ music, which Chapelin plays with an expanded spectrum of colours and expressions on the 37-stop historical organ at Carentan, restored in 1990 by Jean-Loup Boisseau and Bertrand Cattiaux. Taken as a whole, Marchand's organ repertory exceeds his harpsichord output in virtuosity, drama and range of rhetorical effects, especially in pieces such as the basse de trompette (no.55), the quatuor (no.57), and the dialogue (no.64), all from his unpublished Premier livre d'orgue. This reminds us that, for many composers of this period, the published works represent only a fraction of their creative output, and many gems remain hidden in manuscript sources waiting to be revealed. Chapelin should also be commended for her rigorous research efforts in reconstructing the registrations for the Te Deum. However, packing so much music onto one disc has led to the omission of some of the repeats, somewhat affecting balance and proportion. The D minor Sarabande (no.5), for example, might have benefited from a more extended build-up and more generous embellishments had there been room for the second repeat. Some pieces are refreshingly brief, such as the Gigue of the same suite (no.6), from which both repeats have been cut. Interestingly, Chapelin has quietly re-ordered the pieces to conform to modern concert expectations. The Chaconne of the D minor Suite (no.9) is now placed at the end, rather than preceding the Gavote Rondeau and the Menuet.

If Marchand represents one of the most recalcitrant characters of the French Baroque, then Gaspard le Roux certainly counts among the most considerate. Though his pieces are labelled as solo harpsichord music (Pièces de clavessin), le Roux interestingly suggests in his preface that his music can be adapted for three additional combinations of forces. He achieves this by providing an instrumental trio version below each piece, except for the preludes. This means that in addition to treating these pieces as either harpsichord solo or instrumental trios, two more instrumentation possibilities exist, both of which may have had a didactic purpose. In the first, a pupil sings the treble (dessus) of the trio version while providing accompaniment on the figured bass. In the second, the pieces are transformed into two-harpsichord pieces, for which le Roux provides five examples of how one may derive the contrepartie (the right hand of the second harpsichord part) from the instrumental version. In this, le Roux unwittingly set an important precedent for François Couperin's chamber...