Couperin: Clavecin Louis Denis, 1658

This disk takes the instrument on which it is recorded as a starting-point: a harpsichord built by Louis Denis in 1658.

The bulk of the music is by Louis Couperin (uncle of François Couperin "le grand"), but the disk also includes three pieces by the two musicians who had the most profound influence on him: Johann Jakob Froberger, whose combination of keyboard virtuosity and compositional facility meant he spent most of his life touring Europe, thus becoming hugely influential in musical circles across the continent, and Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, the then-harpischordist for the Chambre du Roi, who "discovered" L. Couperin at Chaume-en-Brie and brought him to Paris, where the latter secured positions as a gambist at court and organist of St. Gervais.

Harpsichordist Jovanka Marville and the original Denis harpsichord (restored by Benoît Stehlin in the early 1770s and then again by Reinhard von Nagel in 2004-5) make a marvellous team in bringing the impassioned - and for most listeners relatively unfamiliar - musical aesthetic of late 17th-century France back to life.

A style still very close to its roots in improvisation, Louis Couperin's music consists mainly of short dances and "préludes non mesurés", the latter written out in a notation devoid of specific rhythms, thus leaving the rhetorical structure and expressive thrust to the performer to interpret/invent in the heat of the moment. Ground bass, another very useful format for improvising, forms another cornerstone of this aesthetic, as borne out by several Chaconnes and the one very extended Passacaille that closes the disk. The music is highly volatile and unpredictable, and with a dark emotional charge running through even the most light-hearted of pieces, giving them a surprising gravitas as well as great refinement. Sudden shifts in mood, intent and Affekt are often blisteringly intense, and the instrument itself, with its dry colour, sonic agility and the acoustic "halo" surrounding each note, adds unexpected drive, purpose and continuity to pieces that could easily seem fragmented and incoherent.

A completely unique experience for me, like turning over a stone and discovering a new, self-sustaining and independent musical culture thriving underneath...