COUPERIN COCHARD - ORDRES OUR CLAVECIN 2 4 9 & 11 CD

SKU/Barcode: 822186001547

France's Na ve label has been responsible for numerous novel and exciting recordings of Italian Baroque music, and with this release it also defines the cutting edge for French Baroque keyboard music. This group of four ordres, or sets of short programmatic pieces, performed by the young harpsichordist Violaine Cochard, may well help make the rather dense music of Fran ois Couperin into a concert attraction on a par with Vivaldi and Handel. Cochard has studied with several of the greats of historical keyboard performance, including Christophe Rousset, Kenneth Gilbert, and Pierre Hanta (the last of whom appears here in the opening two-keyboard allemande of the Ninth Ordre). If possible, she outdoes her teachers in charisma and flair. The somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere associated with Couperin in certain performances is nowhere in evidence here. Instead, Cochard sets out to entertain. She takes her time in the slower movements, treating tempos freely and creating sharp contrasts with the faster dances. The images of femininity embodied in many of the titled movements are, to borrow a word from the elegant booklet notes (in French and English) of Vincent Borel, treated affectionately. But there is no loss of the essential complexity of Couperin's music. Indeed, Cochard seems to have immersed herself in the intricate system of signs and references that must have animated Couperin's music. Everything comes together brilliantly at the end of the 11th Ordre, in the subsection mysteriously entitled "Les fastes de la Grande et Ancienne Mxnxstrxndxsx." The last word is an alteration of "M n strandise" -- minstrelsy -- and Couperin was apparently referring in these pieces to an effort on the part of a guild of Parisian street musicians to resist the trend toward the importation of foreigners, above all Italians. Couperin both pokes fun at and transfigures the fiddles and hurdy-gurdies of street music in a set of pieces that are among the most brilliant he ever composed. The entire two-disc set repays multiple hearings and is strongly recommended to those who want to try out Couperin's keyboard music and perhaps even more strongly to those who have decided in the past that it wasn't for them.