Marie van Rhijn's 2016 album on the Evidence label is a collection of brilliant harpsichord pieces arranged from the tragédie en musique, Alcide, a collaboration by Marin Marais and Louis Lully, son of the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Marais was most famous as a composer of viol music, which became enormously popular in the court of Louis XIV, though he is not known to have composed any works for the harpsichord, so these keyboard transcriptions of his operatic music might be a bit unexpected. Consisting of airs and dances, such as the courante, the sarabande, the menuet, and the passepied, most of the pieces here consist of two lines with elaborate ornamentation and are quite suitable to the keyboard. Van Rhijn is a virtuoso of the harpsichord, as well as an authority on vocal music of the French Baroque, so her lively performances convey something of the drama and florid lyricism of the original work, infused with a personal flair that makes her playing fascinating. In addition to the pieces from Alcide, van Rhijn also plays harpsichord adaptations of the Suite in B minor for viol da gamba, including the "Tombeau pour Monsieur de Lully," which rounds out the program with more familiar music by Marais. Highly recommended.
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