Mark Kroll Completes his Couperin Project

courtesy of Naxos of America

This month began with the release of the tenth and final volume in Mark Kroll’s project to record the complete keyboard works of François Couperin on Centaur Records. Due to a flaw in my bookkeeping, my prediction of the content of this final release was incorrect. I had claimed that only two of the ordres remained to be recorded, but the number of remaining ordres was actually three. Furthermore, those three are consecutive: the fourteenth in D major-minor, the fifteenth in A minor-major, and the sixteenth in G minor-major.

By this time I suspect that there are readers thinking that I have written pretty much all I have to say about both Couperin and Kroll’s project. For the most part, they are correct. Nevertheless, the fourteenth ordre is particularly special for me, because it includes two compositions that serve as “milestones” in my personal listening history.

Unless I am mistaken, the very first piece in this ordre is also the very first Couperin composition I ever heard. It’s title is “Le rossignol-en-amour” (the nightingale in love). Ironically, it was on a recorder-and-harpsichord LP my parents had purchased; so what I heard was an arrangement for those instruments, rather than a keyboard solo!

The other favorite is the penultimate composition in this ordre, “Le carillon de Cithére” (the carillon of Cythera). This was on the first Couperin LP that I purchased myself. This was a Musical Heritage Society album of an assortment of Couperin compositions all performed by the harpsichordist Robert Veryon-Lacroix; and I am pretty sure that this “carillon” piece was the first selection on the first side of the disc.

So my journey through Kroll’s traversal of all 27 of Couperin’s ordres has come to an end; but I am certain I shall be returning to these discs to refresh my memories of all of these short pieces, if not to provide guidance when I try to play any of them for myself!