The booklet for this double-disc recording of seven of François Couperin's Ordres for harpsichord refers to the instrument used, a 1751 instrument by Jean-Henry Hemsch, in extravagant terms like "almost supernatural richness." As played by keyboardist
Frédérick Haas, it lives up to such claims.
Haas offers a revisionist reading of Couperin that will surprise many listeners. His lengthy booklet essay lays out an argument contending that, just as much as the pieces explicitly mentioning a "reunion" of French and Italian tastes, the Ordres reflected Italian influences. Couperin, in
Haas's view, was not a court composer inhabiting a narrow musical world of rules and charming listeners with incredibly detailed miniatures within those constraints. Instead, he was a rule-breaker who ignored traditional ideas about texture and rhetoric, fundamentally rethinking the small dance structures in which he worked. What this means for the listener is Couperin that
Glenn Gould might have enjoyed, with racing tempos, phrasing set up to highlight moments of striking density in the music, and an overall free approach. The Hemsch instrument can take whatever
Haas dishes out, with ringing resonances in its upper registers; the potential buyer ought to sample this recording just to hear it. The album is beautifully illustrated, as usual with Alpha, by a painting of the period annotated by Quebec art historian Denis Grenier; Poussin's A Dance to the Music of Time, with an ecstatic treatment of light and brushwork shining through its classical subject matter, seems especially illuminating for the music at hand and the way it is played. Listeners who are used to decorous Couperin may be in for a shock when they hear this, but for many others this will be a recording that gets immediately started again after its last perorations die away.