Topic: Louis Couperin

[Mandryka]

Here's one for Milk

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/KY3lY1ZVup8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/KY3lY1ZVup8</a>

[milk]

Here's one for Milk

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/KY3lY1ZVup8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/KY3lY1ZVup8</a>

Indeed! That’s a pleasure. Guitar kind of equals everything out and make baroque sound like Impressionism.

[Mandryka]

I think this is absolutely fabulous and rather original for the “rhetorical” way he plays the preludes, it’s something he mentions in the booklet but when you hear it in action it has quite an effect. He thinks, basically, that LC’s preludes have nothing to do with lute music and everything to do with Italianate toccatas, apparently it’s an idea he’s filched from Moroney. In practice that means that the music is clearly punctuated into large sections, each of which has its own role to play in the overall oration, making explicit.

the necessary punctuation marks, not evident in the writing, which, in addition to highlighting a change of character, oblige the player to contrive pauses of varying length in order to clarify the structure of the discourse.

Alessandrini has thought hard about the dances too, about tempo, and he plays them with much more nobility than virtuosity - but it’s thrilling to hear partly because of the sound of his harpsichord ( I have no idea what it is, as far as I can see the booklet neglects to tell us.)  The impression is of something dramatic, operatic,  but seriously so, like Corneille or Racine.

That’s a good way to explain this interpretation in words, it’s the musical equivalent of a French tragedy.

Anyway, whatever, it’s a source of great pleasure

[Mandryka]

Listening again to the complete LC from Egarr I'm struck by the enormous variety of music, and having it all arranged in little suites by key makes me think of WTC. You could maybe the talk about the complexity of the C major music, the tenderness of the D major music and so on. In some of the suites I'm reminded of D'Anglebert, in others Froberger. What I would really like is more information on dating, style and influences: I once read a comment of Davitt Maroney's which suggested that very little is known.

Anyway LC is a composer who I think is satisfying when approached by means of a complete set, and this one by Egarr is imaginative, improvisatory, light, resonant, bold. Richard Egarr can sometimes make the voices collide to produce music of great expressiveness and turbulence and complexity. And at other times he knows how to take you by the hand and lead you through a simple flowing river of melody. And Egarr really can make his quill plectra make soul music: the dynamics and colours and textures are astonishing.

And listening to the first CD again this evening, first time in two years,  what I’m hearing most clearly is how dramatic Egarr’s conception is, with large theatrical gestures flamboyantly swaggered, it’s very good, but it’s the sort of thing I would have expected from a thespian like Rousset than Egarr.

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

And listening to the first CD again this evening, first time in two years,  what I’m hearing most clearly is how dramatic Egarr’s conception is, with large theatrical gestures flamboyantly swaggered, it’s very good, but it’s the sort of thing I would have expected from a thespian like Rousset than Egarr.

Nice!

[Mandryka]

Karen  Flint is one of my favourite musicians in Chambonnières and Jacquet de la Guerre and maybe Lebegue too, but this Louis Couperin integral didn’t do much for me when it was released. So I thought I’d better give it another chance.

And as a result I’ve become slightly clearer about what she’s up to.

1. She’s playing Louis Couperin as if he wrote character pieces in the style of François Couperin. The emphasis in these performances is not on the drama nor the counterpoint, it is on the distinct feeling, sentiment, character that each piece expresses. And from that point of view she’s pretty successful.

2. She  plays this music in a highly civilised way. That’s to say, there’s a sort of fluid elegance to what she’s about with Louis Couperin. There’s nothing which would ruffle the feathers of any noble salonista, no asperities, no jolts.

3. She uses very little rubato, maybe none at all. And when you’re used to rubato it’s a challenge to adjust to her style.  it would be wrong to think that they lose out in lyrical expressiveness, she shows very well that this music is melodically expressive. It’s just that the pulse is so steady it becomes a bit boring from that point of view, ponderous even when the tempos are slow. I wonder if anyone thinks this is a good idea.

The harpsichords are recorded closely. Maybe that’s what they sound like when you’re playing them or sitting inside them, but they don’t sound like when you’re in the audience of a recital. If you turn the volume down it’s a pleasure to hear.

[milk]

Karen  Flint is one of my favourite musicians in Chambonnières and Jacquet de la Guerre and maybe Lebegue too, but this Louis Couperin integral didn’t do much for me when it was released. So I thought I’d better give it another chance.

And as a result I’ve become slightly clearer about what she’s up to.

1. She’s playing Louis Couperin as if he wrote character pieces in the style of François Couperin. The emphasis in these performances is not on the drama nor the counterpoint, it is on the distinct feeling, sentiment, character that each piece expresses. And from that point of view she’s pretty successful.

2. She  plays this music in a highly civilised way. That’s to say, there’s a sort of fluid elegance to what she’s about with Louis Couperin. There’s nothing which would ruffle the feathers of any noble salonista, no asperities, no jolts.

3. She uses very little rubato, maybe none at all. And when you’re used to rubato it’s a challenge to adjust to her style.  it would be wrong to think that they lose out in lyrical expressiveness, she shows very well that this music is melodically expressive. It’s just that the pulse is so steady it becomes a bit boring from that point of view, ponderous even when the tempos are slow. I wonder if anyone thinks this is a good idea.

The harpsichords are recorded closely. Maybe that’s what they sound like when you’re playing them or sitting inside them, but they don’t sound like when you’re in the audience of a recital. If you turn the volume down it’s a pleasure to hear.

do you think Scott Ross played this way? Does she just apply this to Couperin? I guess I have to check it out but it seems to me like L. should be mercurial.

[Mandryka]

do you think Scott Ross played this way? Does she just apply this to Couperin? I guess I have to check it out but it seems to me like L. should be mercurial.

I think this is an interesting question, at least thinking of Scott Ross’s François Couperin. It’s true that he plays with very little, if any, rubato, that’s a particularly enigmatic decision given that François Couperin explicitly asked for rubato. It’s as if Ross is making the schoolboy error of confusing the score with the music.

In my opinion, Ross is less inspired in FC at finding the expressive character of each piece, compared with Flint in LC. And I think that Ross has a very individual and elusive way of making the music flow and swing despite the strict pulse, that’s his core skill! Flint can’t come close in the swing department.

As far as I remember there’s no Louis Couperin from Scott Ross, am I forgetting something?

[milk]

I think this is an interesting question, at least thinking of Scott Ross’s François Couperin. It’s true that he plays with very little, if any, rubato, that’s a particularly enigmatic decision given that François Couperin explicitly asked for rubato. It’s as if Ross is making the schoolboy error of confusing the score with the music.

In my opinion, Ross is less inspired in FC at finding the expressive character of each piece, compared with Flint in LC. And I think that Ross has a very individual and elusive way of making the music flow and swing despite the strict pulse, that’s his core skill! Flint can’t come close in the swing department.

As far as I remember there’s no Louis Couperin from Scott Ross, am I forgetting something?

I really like this answer. It's hitting the nail on the head with his Bach, especially the WTC. Little rubato but there's a charm and an individuality or expressiveness. I get a lot from it but it's hard for me to say why since the obvious things I usually hear are lacking. I don't know if he did L. Couperin. This isn't the thread for it but I'm interested in your opinion of his Frescobaldi. Maybe I'll go back and listen tonight. That's a kind of music that seems like it really needs flexibility because it could get rather same-y. Ross liked Frescobaldi and recorded a bit of it.

[Mandryka]

One place where Ross plays with more rubato is Rameau. It’s quite a successful thing, his Rameau.

[Mandryka]

Ross liked Frescobaldi and recorded a bit of it.

This was his final recording, when he made it he knew he was about to die of AIDS.  Can you hear that in the performance? Bitterness, anger, disillusion? I can. And I don't like it at all.

[milk]

This was his final recording, when he made it he knew he was about to die of AIDS.  Can you hear that in the performance? Bitterness, anger, disillusion? I can. And I don't like it at all.

Wow! Hmm... So, disturbing but not in a good way...I might sample it. ETA: I don’t know if I can here all that stuff, and there’s the power of suggestion, but it’s missing something. Joy, perhaps. There’s a lack of sensitivity or something. Tilney is really excellent in that music, but I’m hijacking this thread 

[bioluminescentsquid]

Wow! Hmm... So, disturbing but not in a good way...I might sample it. ETA: I don’t know if I can here all that stuff, and there’s the power of suggestion, but it’s missing something. Joy, perhaps. There’s a lack of sensitivity or something. Tilney is really excellent in that music, but I’m hijacking this thread 

To hijack this thread more, under your suggestion I took a gander at Ross' Frescobaldi. I think it's actually one of the most interesting Frescobaldi recordings I've heard. In a way, it reminds me of Louis Couperin. I'll write more...

[milk]

To hijack this thread more, under your suggestion I took a gander at Ross' Frescobaldi. I think it's actually one of the most interesting Frescobaldi recordings I've heard. In a way, it reminds me of Louis Couperin. I'll write more...

Listening to Vartolo, it's like night and day to Ross's Frescobaldi.
Back to thread duty:


Not all Louis but I feel I'm in safe hands.

[Mandryka]

You see why the notion of a romantic performance, as opposed to an authentic performance, is of very limited value? Ross and Vartolo play Frescobaldi very differently, both are bringing themselves, their selves, their egos, to the interpretation. Like Edwin Fischer and Wilhelm Fürtwangler used to.

And maybe this is authentic. Yesterday Que mentioned Cuiller’s François Couperin. Well the best things about that release in my opinion is the essay in the booklet by someone I haven’t come across before called Manuel Couvreur. He discusses, inter alia, the role of titles in FC’s music, and argues for (or asserts, I’m not quite sure)  this proposition

The title has a different function, and that function is both playful and poetic, a poetry that it yields up through its sonority and the different referential universes that it is likely to evoke in the mind of each performer and each of his or her listeners. The titles, far from closing off the meaning, are a way of reminding us that music, unlike literature, is not about cognition, but also, a contrario, a means of demonstrating – with the aid of ambiguous titles – that the cognitive capacity generally acknowledged in language is less evident than it seems. In this respect, Couperin is singularly modern: performers are left free to choose such and such a perspective, sometimes noble or tender, sometimes critical and piquant, and to let themselves be guided by such and such a meaning; if the titles are indeed doors, they are not doors that lock, but doors that open out into the imaginative world of each of us.

[milk]

You see why the notion of a romantic performance, as opposed to an authentic performance, is of very limited value? Ross and Vartolo play Frescobaldi very differently, both are bringing themselves, their selves, their egos, to the interpretation. Like Edwin Fischer and Wilhelm Fürtwangler used to.

And maybe this is authentic. Yesterday Que mentioned Cuiller’s François Couperin. Well the best things about that release in my opinion is the essay in the booklet by someone I haven’t come across before called Manuel Couvreur. He discusses, inter alia, the role of titles in FC’s music, and argues for (or asserts, I’m not quite sure)  this proposition

There's probably a hundred pages devoted to this on GMG so it may be a tired question but...the last 50 years or so brought a big change to baroque keyboard music. Obviously one big change is the beautiful sounding instruments and recording technologies. What's the next biggest thing? Is it merely how to play these instruments correctly so they sound good?

 

[Mandryka]

My own feeling is that we’ll see an expansion of repertoire - the sort of thing that Glen Wilson is pioneering. And a more widespread appreciation of the meaning of the score - the sort of thing that Colin Booth is encouraging.

[Mandryka]

Listening to Vartolo, it's like night and day to Ross's Frescobaldi.
Back to thread duty:


Not all Louis but I feel I'm in safe hands.

Maybe he makes you feel too safe!

The characteristic seems to me to be lyricism, he makes the music sing. So the Couperin here seems very gracious and noble, maybe the most gracious and noble I know, but it lacks the feeling of audacious, surprising harmonies and rhythms.

Generally I wonder if the later Tilney project, here and in (Contrapuntal) Byrd or Bach (Art of Fugue, French Suites, WTC2) and  Froberger and Frescobaldi, is one of simplification, reduction.

[milk]

Maybe he makes you feel too safe!

The characteristic seems to me to be lyricism, he makes the music sing. So the Couperin here seems very gracious and noble, maybe the most gracious and noble I know, but it lacks the feeling of audacious, surprising harmonies and rhythms.

Generally I wonder if the later Tilney project, here and in (Contrapuntal) Byrd or Bach (Art of Fugue, French Suites, WTC2) and  Froberger and Frescobaldi, is one of simplification, reduction.

he’s definitely restrained in most of his projects, even in Mozart. I haven’t gone back to this recently but I probably don’t really like it as much as Sempe, Van Asperen and some of the others.
I want to say that Tilney is very English, but I don’t mean it as an insult. 

[Mandryka]

he’s definitely restrained in most of his projects, even in Mozart. I haven’t gone back to this recently but I probably don’t really like it as much as Sempe, Van Asperen and some of the others.
I want to say that Tilney is very English, but I don’t mean it as an insult.

No not English, If you listen to English musicians like Egarr, Davitt Moroney and Colin Booth, they’re not really like him in the later recordings. Still less so Mahan Esfahani and Thurston Dart.

Tilney wrote a book on the unmeasured prelude. If you look at Alessandrini’s notes on Louis Couperin he has some interesting things to say about these preludes, which he basically thinks are a bit like toccatas in Frescobaldi’s Bk 2 - several different sections each of which has its own emotional feel.