Mark Kroll’s Couperin Project: Volume Seven

courtesy of Naxos of America

Last month Centaur Records released Volume 7 in Mark Kroll’s project to record the complete keyboard works of François Couperin. The project seems to be building up steam as it approaches completion. According to the Discography Web page on Kroll’s Web site, Centaur has assigned consecutive catalog numbers for the eighth and ninth volumes; but, at the present time, there is no information about when either of these recordings will actually be released. According to my records, with the completion of Volume 7, eight of the ordres remain to be recorded. I do not know whether Kroll is planning to add the compositions that are included in Couperin’s treatise L’Art de Toucher le Clavecin (the art of playing the harpsichord); but my “educated guess” is that the project will conclude with the release of the tenth volume (assuming that, as in the past, each volume is a single CD).

In some respects Volume 7 serves as a companion to Volume 6, which included the very first ordre in the collection in the key of G (“major-minor”). That ordre has a particularly large number (twenty) of selections of both dance movements and “character” pieces. Volume 7 begins with the second ordre, which is even lengthier, consisting of 23 pieces in the key of D (“major-minor”). In addition, as the first ordre was coupled with the ninth in Volume 6, Volume 7 couples the second ordre with the tenth, also a D “major-minor” collection. (The ordres with the largest number of pieces are to be found in the first book in the series. Published in 1713, this consists of the first five ordres.) Furthermore, all four of these ordres  in the two most recent volumes were recorded in 2018 at the WGBH Fraser Performance Studio in Boston; and all the recordings were made with a harpsichord completed by William Dowd in 1974 based on a design by Pascal Taskin.

Considering the prodigious number of pieces that have been collected in Couperin’s 27 ordres, one might think that there would be a risk of identifying some of the later pieces as “more of the same” with respect to the earlier ones. However, these pieces were not written for a concert audience that was expected to “sit still and listen” as a keyboardist displayed his/her skills at his/her instrument. During the first half of the eighteenth century, entertainment was more likely to be found in the act of playing (or even just trying to play) the music, rather than listening dutifully do someone else do the playing. I suppose that is why Kroll’s recordings have encouraged me to sit down with the scores and not only try to get my hands around the polyphonic intricacies of the music but also try to capture some sense of the “character” of the pieces with imaginative titles.

Nevertheless, there is still much joy to be derived from listening to Kroll play these pieces. The fact is that one can appreciate approaching any one of these ordres as a listening experience unto itself. It provides the listener with a stimulating journey that interleaves familiar dance forms with intriguing descriptive titles to tweak the imagination. As a result, I find myself easily wrapped up in each of Kroll’s performances that have progressed with the release his these recordings; but that disposition then becomes further incentive for me to spend time at my own keyboard!