James Johnstone - Couperin & d'Anglebert: Works for Organ (2019) [CD Rip]

Metronome Recordings announces the complete works for organ by François Couperin, composer to the court of Louis XIV. James Johnstone continues his series of recordings on the great baroque organs of Europe on the 1699 organ by Julien Tribuot, Louis XIV’s organ builder, now in the Église St Martin in Seurre, Burgundy. This last surviving instrument by a revered builder is close to its original condition. A leading baroque organist, James Johnstone recorded these works as part of 350th anniversary celebrations of Couperin's birth in 2018, and completes Metronome’s survey of Couperin’s complete keyboard works.

François Couperin was the most illustrious member of a musical dynasty second only to that of the Bach family. His pieces reveal a delicate interplay between reality and theatrical illusion, an escape into an often elegiac dream world of poetic fantasy displayed in simple dance movements, portraits, and theatrical miniatures.

Performers are confronted by some of their greatest challenges: not only must they observe the composer’s instructions to the letter, but also convey that elusive and indefinable ‘bon goût’ through an understanding of and rapport with the enigmas, abstractions and metaphors that are redolent of expressive subtlety.

The CD booklet contains an informative essay by the French Baroque specialist, Nicholas Anderson, in both English and French, as well colour photos of the principal instruments used.