Conversation: Gaspard Le Roux - Suites pour deux clavecins in Bloomington, MN

The harpsichord music of French Baroque composer
Gaspard Le Roux
is rarely played, partly because listeners like to attach a biography to music, and for him, there is almost none. It is unknown where he was born, worked, and died. These two-harpsichord pieces also present difficulties in performance, explored in separate interviews with harpsichordists
William Christie
and
Justin Taylor
in the booklet. They may be played either as harpsichord works or as trio pieces, which has implications for the second harpsichord part; it may contain improvisational elements. This is played by the almost-octogenarian
Christie
, leaving the highly virtuosic first part to his protégé
Taylor
. So, there is plenty here to interest specialists and serious Baroque enthusiasts, but the album is also highly listenable for general audiences. As
points out,
Le Roux
's music owes little to
Couperin
's "often intimist art." His movements have simple dance titles, with none of the arcane descriptors of
and the other French Baroque keyboard-music composers (arrangements of whose music are included here as entr'actes).
puts it nicely when he says the
is first and foremost a "symphonist." His textures are dense, with considerable virtuosity matched with some harmonic complexity. The short dances are especially distinctive in their density; sample the Gavotte from the
Suite No. 3 for two harpsichords in A minor
.
is capable of some highly atmospheric passages like the dramatic prelude in the
Suite No. 1 in D minor
. The two instruments used by
, one from
's time and one modern, are impressively powerful and are capable of speaking for themselves without the intervention of
Harmonia Mundi
's booming church sound. However, this is likely to become a standard interpretation of these difficult works. ~ James Manheim