The harpsichord music of Louis Couperin (c.1626-1661) occupies a unique place in the glorious flowering of French keyboard music of the baroque era. His short life story is a touching one, marked by strong family bonds, then by the devastation of war, professional success and recognition, before the tragedy of sudden sickness and an early death. He left an indelible mark on musical history in a span of just ten years.

This release contains the complete works for organ by François Couperin, composer to the court of Louis XIV. James Johnstone continues his series of recordings on the great baroque organs of Europe on the 1699 organ by Julien Tribuot, Louis XIV’s organ builder, now in the Eglise St Martin in Seurre, Burgundy. This last surviving instrument by a revered builder is close to its original condition. A leading baroque organist, James Johnstone recorded these works as part of 350th anniversary celebrations of Couperin's birth in 2018, and completes Metronome’s survey of Couperin’s complete keyboard works.

Couperin’s four dance suites of Les nations were published in 1726. Each is prefaced with an Italianate trio sonata whose music, for three of them, derives from sonatas which Couperin wrote during the 1690s. The fourth, introducing ‘L’impériale’, is a more fluently mature piece which he probably composed much later on. If the introductory ‘Sonades’, as Couperin called them, are Italian in their idiom, then the appended dances are characteristically and unmistakeably French. Jordi Savall brings the music to life with mediterranean warmth and an intuitive feeling for dance rhythms and their individual gestures.

Album number four from the brigands of baroque music is a colourful chest of stolen musical jewels, featuring Vivaldi’s famous ‘Tempesta di Mare” concerto, a theatrically piratical suite of pieces by Couperin, the famous Albinoni Adagio and much more!