Couperin: Les Nations & Pieces De Violes

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Thurston Dart was behind these recordings, yet the performance style, with violin vibrato in Les Nations, now appears dated. The Pièces de violes fare better, but the sound is restricted. — BBC Music Magazine, March 2020, 2 out of 5 stars

Release Date: 25th Oct 2019
Catalogue No: ELQ4828544
Label: Eloquence
Length: 2 hours 16 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Couperin, F: Les Nations: Premier Ordre 'La Françoise'

Work length18:53

$9.90

$13.50

Thurston Dart (harpsichord), Desmond Dupre (viola da gamba), Sir Neville Marriner (violin), Carl Pini (violin)
Jacobean Ensemble
Thurston Dart
Recorded: 1962
Recording Venue: London

1. Sonade

Track length7:34

$1.10

$1.50

2. Allemande

Track length1:25

$1.10

$1.50

3. Courante

Track length0:48

$1.10

$1.50

4. Seconde Courante

Track length0:47

$1.10

$1.50

5. Sarabande

Track length2:26

$1.10

$1.50

6. Gigue

Track length1:02

$1.10

$1.50

7. Chaconne en Passacaille

Track length3:20

$1.10

$1.50

8. Gavotte

Track length0:41

$1.10

$1.50

9. Menuet

Track length0:50

$1.10

$1.50

Couperin, F: Les Nations: Deuxième Ordre 'L'Espagnole'

Work length27:42

$11.00

$15.00

Thurston Dart (harpsichord), Desmond Dupre (viola da gamba), Sir Neville Marriner (violin), Carl Pini (violin)
Jacobean Ensemble
Thurston Dart
Recorded: 1962
Recording Venue: London

1. Sonade

Track length9:06

$1.10

$1.50

2. Allemande

Track length1:28

$1.10

$1.50

3. Courante

Track length1:03

$1.10

$1.50

4. Seconde Courante

Track length1:07

$1.10

$1.50

5. Sarabande

Track length1:48

$1.10

$1.50

6. Gigue Lourée

Track length1:30

$1.10

$1.50

7. Gavotte

Track length1:14

$1.10

$1.50

8. Rondeau

Track length3:20

$1.10

$1.50

9. Bourée & Double

Track length1:05

$1.10

$1.50

10. Passacaille

Track length6:01

$1.10

$1.50

Couperin, F: Les Nations, Troisième ordre 'L'Impériale'

Work length28:37

$11.00

$15.00

Carl Pini (violin), Desmond Dupre (viola da gamba), Sir Neville Marriner (violin), Thurston Dart (director), Thurston Dart (harpsichord)
Jacobean Ensemble
Recorded: 1958-12
Recording Venue: Decca Studios, West Hampstead, London

Sonade

Track length10:38

$1.10

$1.50

Allemande

Track length2:16

$1.10

$1.50

Courante

Track length2:07

$1.10

$1.50

Seconde Courante

Track length2:05

$1.10

$1.50

Sarabande

Track length1:22

$1.10

$1.50

Bourée

Track length0:42

$1.10

$1.50

Gigue

Track length0:37

$1.10

$1.50

Rondeau

Track length2:12

$1.10

$1.50

Chaconne

Track length5:30

$1.10

$1.50

Menuet

Track length1:08

$1.10

$1.50

Couperin, F: Les nations, Quatrième ordre 'La piémontoise'

Work length24:17

$7.70

$10.50

Carl Pini (violin), Desmond Dupre (viola da gamba), Sir Neville Marriner (violin), Thurston Dart (director), Thurston Dart (harpsichord)
Jacobean Ensemble
Recorded: 1958-12
Recording Venue: Decca Studios, West Hampstead, London

Sonade

Track length10:28

$1.10

$1.50

Allemande

Track length2:09

$1.10

$1.50

Courante

Track length2:14

$1.10

$1.50

Seconde Courante

Track length2:32

$1.10

$1.50

Sarabande

Track length2:33

$1.10

$1.50

Rondeau

Track length2:25

$1.10

$1.50

Gigue

Track length1:56

$1.10

$1.50

Couperin, F: Suite 1, for viola da gamba & continuo (Pièces de viole)

Work length24:23

$7.70

$10.50

Dennis Nesbitt (viola da gamba), Thurston Dart (harpsichord), Desmond Dupre (viola da gamba)
Recorded: 1957
Recording Venue: London

1. Prelude

Track length3:53

$1.10

$1.50

2. Allemande légere

Track length2:17

$1.10

$1.50

3. Courante

Track length2:41

$1.10

$1.50

4. Sarabande grave

Track length3:02

$1.10

$1.50

5. Gavotte

Track length3:30

$1.10

$1.50

6. Gigue

Track length2:34

$1.10

$1.50

7. Pasacaille ou Chaconne

Track length6:26

$1.10

$1.50

Couperin, F: Suite 2, for viola da gamba & continuo (Pièces de viole)

Work length12:39

$4.40

$6.00

Dennis Nesbitt (viola da gamba), Thurston Dart (harpsichord), Desmond Dupre (viola da gamba)
Recorded: 1957
Recording Venue: London

1. Prelude

Track length2:26

$1.10

$1.50

2. Fuguette

Track length2:16

$1.10

$1.50

3. Pompe funébre

Track length5:07

$1.10

$1.50

4. La chemise blanche

Track length2:50

$1.10

$1.50

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About

Three L’Oiseau-Lyre albums of chamber music by Couperin, newly remastered and compiled together for the first time, including material new to CD.

During the past half-century, Francois Couperin ‘the Great’ has indeed come to be regarded among the great European composers. Where once he was dismissed with faint praise as the confector of trifles to amuse the Sun-King and his court, we now see him more in the round, balancing devotional psalms with bitingly observant galleries of men and women from high and low stations, as keenly interested in the view from his Parisian window as the glitter of Versailles.

Dart and his colleagues recorded the pair of ‘Suites de violes’ in 1957, the scores having only been rediscovered around 40 years previously, but they were enthusiastically promoted by the musicologist Wilfred Mellers, who declared them to stand as a highlight of Couperin’s chamber music. This album supports the contention of H. C. Robbins Landon, writing about Les Nations in 1973: ‘Unlike many musicologists, who are poor performers, Dart was a wizard at any keyboard. He was also an excellent director, as the present records attest’. Landon singles out his

immaculately crisp rhythmic sense for special praise, as well as his scholarly attention to ornamentation, without which the French Baroque idiom soon dies.

Couperin’s cosmopolitan nature is nowhere more evident than in the four-volume collection of Les Nations, published in 1726 but composed during the previous 35 years. French and Italian styles mingle freely in these suites for trio-sonata ensemble. Made in London and 1958 and 1962, this was their first complete recording, and it was welcomed by critics as displaying all the facets of Couperin’s masterly contrapuntal writing with easy authority, and in an ensemble of two violins accompanied by a continuo of harpsichord and viola da gamba that would have been familiar to Couperin himself. In a 1965 interview, the director of L’Oiseau-Lyre was proud to point out that Dart and Marriner had spent two years editing the score of Les Nations for this recording.

‘Dupré plays sensitively, and is fluent and convincing in ornamentation. Dennis Nesbitt … plays his part firmly but never too obtrusively … the harpsichord [is] here played with style and refinement by Thurston Dart.’ Gramophone, July 1958 (Pièces de violes)

‘This further instalment of Couperin’s chamber music by the Jacobean Ensemble is distinguished by the finesse of playing and a sense of style that is all too rare in modern recordings … The individual character of these pieces emerges vividly and naturally, and will surely give pleasure to all connoisseurs of French music.’ Gramophone, November 1962 (Les Nations)

Reviews

March 2020

Thurston Dart was behind these recordings, yet the performance style, with violin vibrato in Les Nations, now appears dated. The Pièces de violes fare better, but the sound is restricted.

Couperin: Les Nations & Pieces De Violes

2 CDs

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