Fernando De Luca - Pieces de Clavecin - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Another discovery unearthed by Brilliant Classics, and another name to add to the library of French-Baroque masters, from the voraciously inquisitive mind and virtuoso hands of Fernando de Luca. Who was Hubert Renotte (1704-1745)? He was born and died in the Belgian city of Liege, and for the last decade of his life served as the titular organist of the cathedral there. Accordingly he wrote a good deal of church music, which remains as overlooked as his output for keyboard. This in itself encompasses not only organ music but the distinctively Franco-Italian style of the harpsichord pieces presented for the first time on record in the present album.The C major Suite is launched in dazzling style with 'Les Roulades et Harpeggio', living up to it's title with cascades of sequences up and down the keyboard. Renotte must have been quite the technician, as well as a composer of great taste and refinement. Perhaps he had a sense of humour, too, to judge from the third movement of the suite 'Les Bagatelles Ou Les Folies de Liege & Menuet en Suite Des Bagatelles'. Again, true to the title, Renotte presents a series of sharply etched, fantastical sketches, which we might now hear as proto-Beethovenian in their oblique and disconcerting wit. The Suite concludes with, literally, 'Le Torrent', another sparkling cataract of notes. Whether or not Renotte ever intended them to be played in sequence this way - the music survives in manuscript, and there is no sign that they were published - the other pieces are also gathered up by key signature. There are 17 such pieces in D major, including a 'Pastorella' whose charming character belongs to the association of the key with country manners. On this new recording, Fernando de Luca plays a modern copy by Claudio Capone of a Blanchet harpsichord from 1754. While Jos van Immerseel recorded an LP-length selection of Renotte's works, this i

First recordings of the complete surviving keyboard works by a forgotten figure of the French Baroque.Brilliant Classics has revived the names of many composers from obscure corners of history. Few of them have been as buried by the past as Pierre-Claude Foucquet, who was active in Paris in the first half of the 18th century. Yet anyone listening to this first complete recording of his music for harpsichord will surely wonder why. Three volumes survive two books of Pièces de Clavecin, and a third entitled Caractères de la Paix. This was the first to be published in 1749. By then Foucquet had been organist at the magnificent Church of Saint-Eustache for some years, and he would go on to take up the post of titulaire at Notre Dame. He was following in a distinguished family line, his father and grandfather both having been organists at Saint-Eustache.Foucquet must have been a richly talented organist and improviser in the French tradition, and this latter quality is abundantly and delightfully preserved by the character pieces which make up these harpsichord suites. They belong to the same tradition as the Pièces de Clavecin of Couperin, d'Anglebert and Rameau, but they have a palette of colour and a dramatic imagination of their own. The third movement of Caractères de la Paix is titled 'Le Feu', and it fairly sets the instrument alight with pounding explosions and ribbons of flame, demanding all the resources of both an instrument and interpreter at full stretch.From 1751 and 1758 respectively, the second and third books are hardly less full of vividly pictorial representations - of chickens and champagne, of figures lamenting and working and praying in a gallery of probably real people whose names are now lost to us but whose personality lives on in the keyboard music of French composers from the time.This album of Foucquet is a notable addition to the Brilliant Cla

With this new recording, Fernando de Luca fills a significant gap in the catalogue of French Baroque music. While sonatas of Tapray have been recorded on a modern piano, there is no recording of them on the harpsichord; all the more significant because Tapray stands as a pivotal figure in the history of French keyboard music, positioned at the crossroads between the harpsichord and the fortepiano.Born in 1738, Jean-François Tapray worked in Paris, Besançon, and elsewhere as an organist, until ill health forced his retirement in 1786. However, he continued to compose, at least until the turn of the century, and died in 1822. From 1773 onwards, he had embraced the new technology of the fortepiano and published a Keyboard Method (Op. 25) for the instrument. All the same, he continued to write specifically for the harpsichord too, such as a Symphony Op. 12 for harpsichord and orchestra, from 1780. Thus his works, such as the sonatas presented here, reflect both the culmination and the last flowering of the harpsichord tradition in France.The Variations on Les Sauvages is often cited as one of the last great virtuoso works for the harpsichord in France. Tapray's piece is both a transcription and a reworking of a famous air by Rameau, taken from his opéra-ballet Les Indes galantes (1735). The four variations embrace a diverse array of styles, from the cascades of the modern galant style to the unstable rhythms of the French Baroque, and finally a synthesis of both German and Italian style in the last variation.In this sense, the Variations do not so much look back on the Baroque era as absorb it's style within a rapidly evolving culture. The sonatas, likewise, capture a galant aesthetic with their alternation between spirited Allegro movements, graceful airs, and highly stylized dances. For this recording, Fernando de Luca has chosen a harpsichord modelled after a Blanchet