François Couperin: Portraits

This live recording immortalizes Christophe Rousset's performance at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid on January 8, 2025, a featured event in the Earning a Living concert series. François Couperin's keyboard compositions illuminate the role of royal patronage as the modus vivendi for musicians of the Early Modern period. Couperin's treatise, L’Art de Toucher le Clavecin, is here interwoven with a selection of his Pièces de clavecin, giving rise to a portrait gallery in music, each inspired by anonymous figures who inhabited the French court. This set of pièces de caractère, whose allusive and encoded meanings remain largely enigmatic today, is presented in groupings by tonality, each offering a window into the refined world of Baroque palace life and its intricate web of connections.

1: Premier Prélude in C Major
2: La Castellane in C Major
3: Les Grâces Naturéles in C Major
4: La Monflambert in C Major
5: La Favorite in C Major
6: Deuxième Prélude in D Minor
7: L'Antonine in D Minor
8: La Charoloise in D Minor
9: Allemande in G Minor
10: Troisième Prélude in G Minor
11: La Ménetou in G Minor
12: La Chazé in G Minor
13: La Princesse Marie in G Minor
14: La Bourbonnoise in G Minor
15: La Milordine in G Minor
16: Quatrième Prélude in F Major
17: La Verneüil in F Major
18: La Verneüillétte in F Major
19: Cinquième Prélude in a Major
20: La Régente in a Major
21: La Villers in a Major
22: La Princesse De Sens in a Major
23: La Princesse De Chabeüil Ou La Muse De Monaco in a Major
24: Sixième Prélude in B Minor
25: La Raphaéle in B Minor
26: La Morinete in B Minor
27: Septième Prélude in B-flat Major
28: La Bersan in B-flat Major
29: Huitième Prélude in E Minor
30: La Boulonoise in E Minor

Composer: François Couperin

Number of Discs: 1

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