Some of the Baroque releases on Canada's ATMA label have stuck close to established molds, but this one by the young Québécoise harpsichordist
Catherine Perrin breaks them all.
Perrin's career is unusual in itself; while many performers of early music stick to the specialized circles of players who do the same,
Perrin has parallel careers as a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio host, contemporary music performer, and musical theater enthusiast.
Perrin subtitles her disc "Five Centuries of Preludes on the Harpsichord," but she intends something slightly different: an examination of the prelude as a musical idea. In her booklet notes she quotes writer
Michel Chion, who situates the prelude in a space of unique freedom, "a privileged position in the vanguard," unleashed by "the fact that it occurs before the time has come to be serious or definitive." Preludes in
Perrin's view are daring pieces that allow a composer to show off harmonic virtuosity, but their tendency toward innovation is counterbalanced by a great weight of tradition in the form of the legacy of
Johann Sebastian Bach.
With these concepts in mind,
Perrin puts together five "suites" of four to seven preludes each, with
Bach represented at least once and often more often in each one. The contents of each suite go backward and forward into time from there, as far back as English virginalist John Bull in the second suite and up to contemporary composers, who cannot escape
Bach's example; Quebec composer
Jean Lesage addresses the Baroque legacy directly in La chaotique: prélude dans le goût Baroque. The interconnections among the pieces come so fast and furiously that by the time
Perrin does something really bizarre, namely playing
Chopin's Prelude in B minor, Op. 28/6, on the harpsichord, the listener barely feels startled.
Perrin studied with
Bob van Asperen and with Canadian harpsichordist
Scott Ross, but the player she perhaps resembles most is
Wanda Landowska, whom she once portrayed as an actress in a play. Her playing is big in its gestures and attention-grabbing, and all in all she's just enough of a drama queen to carry off this slightly outrageous but consistently fascinating endeavor.