Cembalowerke

This live recording immortalizes the performance of Christophe Rousset at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid on January 8, 2025, an event as part of the concert series Earning a Living. The keyboard compositions of François Couperin shed light on the role of royal patronage as a modus vivendi for musicians in the early modern period. Couperin's treatise L'Art de Toucher le Clavecin is here interwoven with a selection of his Pièces de clavecin, creating a musical portrait gallery inspired by anonymous personalities of the French court. These pièces de caractère, whose allusive and encoded meanings remain largely enigmatic to this day, are presented grouped by key and each offer an insight into the refined world of Baroque palace life and the intricate web of relationships.