An original and prestigious concept: the harpsichord music by the 4 prominent members of the Couperin Dynasty! The Couperin Dynasty, a renowned family of French composers, spanned several generations and played a pivotal role in the development of Baroque music during the 17th and 18th centuries. This musical lineage, centered around the Parisian court, produced a remarkable array of composers, the most prominent of whom were François Couperin, his nephew Armand-Louis Couperin, Louis Couperin and Gervais-François Couperin.

AEOLUS presents the second volume of the Louis Couperin Edition with Bob van Asperen. The recording was made on the 1681 Vaudry harpsichord in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and is currently the only audio document available of this famous instrument. The SACD contains harpsichord suites composed by Louis Couperin, who lived in Paris in the 17th century. Among the pieces is the famous "Tombeau de Mr Blancrocher".

The music of Louis Couperin has never had quite the celebrity of that of his uncle François or of the other famous French keyboard composers of the eighteenth century. The harpsichord works here date from around 1650. They were thus contemporary with reign Mazarin, the courtier and prime minister who really ruled France, at least until the rebellion known as the Fronde curbed the power of the court. The lush booklet does an excellent job of placing Couperin against his cultural background, and really the disc is worth purchasing for the lavish illustrations of the period French harpsichord used (the small picture of the Greek god Pan above the keyboard is reproduced at full size inside, and it's fabulous).

Andreas Staier’s informed and inspired interpretations have left their mark on the discography of both the harpsichord and the fortepiano and have enabled us to see Bach, Mozart and Schubert in a completely new light. This is Staier’s first solo album of a projected series for Alpha Classics, in which he also presents his own compositions for the first time.

John Kitchen continues his much-lauded series of recordings from the instruments of the world-famous Roger Mirrey collection of keyboard instruments. Recorded in St Cecilia's Hall, Scotland's oldest purpose-built concert hall, this programme is specifically designed to highlight the unique qualities of the 1755 double-manual harpsichord by Luigi Baillon. Built in Cyteux, Burgundy, it has a very different sound from Parisian instruments of the time; cleaner and brighter in tone, it is the perfect vehicle for Kitchen's subtly nuanced playing, which brings the sophistication of the period to new life.

Even by the supremely high production standards of Alpha recordings, this issue is especially splendid. Entitled Versailles, L'ile enchantée, it fully lives up to its name. As directed by Skip Sempé, the widely varied program features music written for Louis XIV's pleasure palace, performed by the Capriccio Stravagante Orchestra with mezzo soprano Guillemette Laurens and bass violist Jay Bernfeld. Each work is superbly selected, and every performance is absolutely idiomatic and wonderfully alive. There is wit and tenderness and elegance and, yes, nobility to their performances, which taken together form as much a portrait of the Sun King as the palace of Versailles itself.

Before Versailles, the epicentre of power in the Kingdom of France was the Louvre, a genuine theatre of ceremonies where music was duty- bound to impress with its magnificence. In the reign of Louis XIII, the air de cour and ballet mobilised the elite of composers such as Moulinié, Guédron and Chancy. The most famous of them, Boesset, guided the polyphonic air inherited from the Renaissance towards a more intimate conception: before the sumptuous splendours to come in the shadow of the Sun King, it is a rich array of delicately chiselled miniatures that the combined talents of the Ensemble Correspondances give us the opportunity to hear today.

France and England had strong musical links during the reign of Louis XIV, with two Englsih sovereigns exiled to France, Francophiles and Francophones, Catholics and allies, linked by blood to their cousin, the Greatest King in the World. After the beheading of his father in 1649, Charles II sought refuge in France before regaining his throne in 1660 and imposing a musical style marked by the French example, in particular the creation of the 24 King’s Violins, and the Royal Academy of Music directed by the Frenchman Cambert! Then from 1689 to 1701, it was James II who lived in exile in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

At the harpsichord, Rinaldo Alessandrini creates several ‘suites de danse’ from the magnificent output of Louis Couperin.

The debut album of the young gambist André Lislevand is devoted to the great oeuvre for viol of Antoine Forqueray. Ambiguity: a word that can easily have a negative or derogatory meaning but which also accurately describes the various aspects of Forqueray’s music and the duality of style that distinguished music in the France of the Sun King: indubitably French, but also strongly influenced by the Italian idiom.

Alexei Lubimov is a Russian pianist who also plays fortepiano and harpsichord. In his early years he studied at the Moscow Central Music School, and in 1963, entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with Heinrich Neuhaus and Lew Naumov. He developed a strong interest in Baroque music and 20th century modernist works. Lubimov gave the Soviet premieres of many western compositions, including pieces by Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, Terry Riley, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, which brought censorship from the Soviet authorities. For a number of years he was prevented from traveling outside the Soviet Union. Turning to his interest in period instruments and authentic performance practices, he founded the Moscow Baroque Quartet and co-founded the Moscow Chamber Academy with Tatiana Grindenko.

This manuscript, from Christophe Rousset's private collection, was discovered by him in 2004. Dedicated to a Madame de Théobon, it contains not only the essential French harpsichord pieces of the late seventeenth century, but also many transcriptions of compositions by Lully and several hitherto completely unknown preludes. Providing precious insight into the art of the harpsichordist and the musical practices of that time, these pieces are recorded here for the first time. With it's powerful but still austere sound, the Nicolas Dumont harpsichord of 1704 does them full justice.

Known as the ‘First Lady of the organ’, Marie-Claire Alain was a strikingly mature, creative and intuitive artist. Spanning four centuries of music, from Baroque masterpieces by the likes of Couperin and Grigny, through cornerstones of the French organ repertoire by Widor, Vierne and Messiaen, to two discs of works by her brother Jehan, this collection is testament to her vast and impressively wide-ranging recording legacy.

The Italian-style trio sonata, honed by Corelli into a monument of seventeenth century classicism with its perfect balance of new-found tonality and assimilation of dance forms into art music, had a hard time finding a foothold in France. Among other aspects, the unwillingness to abandon the dance suite – possibly caused by the privileged position of ballet as a royal pastime at the court of Louis XIV – meant that French composers waited until the end of the century to compose "proper" trio sonatas. But a great deal of experimentation with the form went on before that, and not surprisingly one of the experimenters was the Italian "immigrant" Lully. His rôle at the court of the Sun-king included providing small-scale works for the Coucher du Roi, the nightly ceremony marking the king's withdrawal to bed.

Early music ensemble Earthly Angels was founded in 2016 by Kajsa Dahlbäck and is affiliated with Vaasa Baroque. Its first release was awarded "Album of the Year 2018" by the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation. The ensemble Earthly Angels performs vocal chamber music mainly from the 17th and 18th centuries. It focuses on a close, embodied relationship between text and music, on finding new interesting music from the early music repertoire, and on making early music meaningful for today's audiences.