CD Review | Louis Couperin: Complete Works. Jean Rondeau

This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en: Français (French)

Louis Couperin: Complete Works

Jean Rondeau, harpsichord

Erato, 2025

While most keyboard players succumb to modern tastes and decide to perform baroque composers on the piano, Jean Rondeau remains devoted to the sounds of the harpsichord. Under the French musician’s fingers, we are enveloped by the depth and vibration of this plucked string instrument.

For his latest release on Erato, Rondeau offers us one of the most important projects of his artistic life: a complete Louis Couperin in no less than 10 volumes, totaling nearly 300 of his works. In the illustrious Couperin family, it is indeed the uncle to whom homage is being paid with a 400th anniversary in 2026, and not his nephew François, the eminent musician at the court of Louis XIV. Rondeau wanted to pay tribute to the man who, like his nephew, had a “direct emotional impact” on him at the age of six.

Rondeau exploits the silences

From the outset, the performer captures our attention by skillfully exploiting the dramatic silences in the prelude to the Suite in D major, an unusually long movement (more than eight minutes) that demonstrates great inventiveness. The successive sections all seem to stem from the musical material developed in this prelude. The two sarabandes bring an extra touch of soul and introspection to the work as a whole, contrasting with the more exploratory episodes, such as the final chaconne.

In addition to being useful, even essential, for advancing our knowledge of the baroque repertoire, this collection of recordings is a remarkable auditory adventure, guided by Rondeau’s musical taste and expertise. The preludes, on the one hand, and the chaconnes, on the other, are captivating narratives, often accompanied by nicknames which, by definition, also tell us something about the music we are hearing. Added to this are a few forays into the work of other composers close to Couperin, completing the portrait of an era.

Translation: L. I. Liganor

This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en: Français (French)