F. Couperin Pièces de violes avec la basse chiffrée, Deuxième Suite - Prélude, gravement
F. Couperin Troisième Concert Royal - Gavotte
Press round-up:
"Clasica2 recomienda este excelente CD de Claire Gautrot y Marouan Mankar-Bennis con obras de Couperin editado por el prestigioso sello francés L'Encelade. . Una verdadera delicia"Clasica2
"Подчиняясь искусству разговора, два инструмента, поочередно солируют, пленяя и восхищая аристократическим величием, пасторальными эмоциями и меланхолической безмятежностью." Музыкальная афиша – Affiche musicale
"Claire Gautrot un interprete raffinata e versatile, a suo agio nelle pieghe, nelle luci e nelle ombre di questa musica complessa e cortigiana. E Marouan Mankar-Bennis la segue ed accompagna, in riguardosa prospettiva, in queste narrazioni destinate a distrarre attraverso la raffinata evocazione di remote atmosfere.." Ferruccio Nuzzo -Grey Panthers
Overview :
The Pièces de Violes avec la Basse Chiffrée*, published in 1728, are François Couperin’s (1688-1733) last will and testament in chamber music and one of the high points of the repertoire for viola da gamba and harpsichord.
These pieces navigate a course between the classical world of the suite of dances and the world of “character” pieces using emotional effects and contrasts. This combination of the “tastes” that were so dear to François Couperin allowed him to come up with a brilliant, poetic, virtuoso synthesis of the French and Italian styles
Inspired by this steadfastly personal language, Claire Gautrot and Marouan Mankar-Bennis offer a lively yet profound interpretation of these Suites. The Third Royal Concert, written fifteen or so years earlier for King Louis XIV’s private concerts, along with pieces from the ninth and fifteenth Orders have been chosen to complement the programme.
* The Pièces de Violes avec la Basse Chiffrée were printed and published in Paris in 1728, but were thought to have been lost over the course of the eighteenth century. It has to be said that, unlike the harpsichord books, which explicitly mention the composer’s name, the title page of the pieces for viols offers no more than an enigmatic “By Mr F.C.” which does not make identification easy. In the end, a single copy was found in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris in 1919. The attribution was finally confirmed based upon an examination of a series of clues relating to the way that the ornamentation is scored and the publishing methods used. We do not know why Couperin did not have his name spelt out in full on one of his final works, shortly before the fourth Book for harpsichord (1730), and this is all the more striking given that these are some of the musician’s most beautiful compositions.
