Fran?ois Couperin: Les Regrets Ou L'art De La M?lancolie

Description

François Couperin, known as ‘le grand’, won renown when, at the early age of 25 in 1693, he was appointed to a high position in Louis XIV’s private chapel. In the following years he compiled the core of his greatest works, the four monumental Pièces de clavecin, which represent the apex of his compositional mastery with a refined use of counterpoint and a galant taste for embellishments and rich, often subtly melancholic characterisation. This album features eight preludes from Couperin’s L’Art de toucher le clavecin to create small suites that freely use pieces from the first two books of the Pièces de clavecin. “I have spent many years of my life with François Couperin’s music, in particular with the eight preludes of L’art de toucher le clavecin…because they seem to me an ideal testimony of that particularly suggestive phrase of his, which more or less recites, “If there is great distance between grammar and declamation, there is infinite distance between written music and a good performance. This is difficult music, extremely fragile, very subtle, which requires putting into practice the old precept “Ars est celare artem” – art consists in concealing art –, in the almost obsessive search for the naturalness, in conveying and feeling, that is what this music calls for especially, in my opinion.”( Extract from Stefano Lorenzetti’s video)