Louis Couperin - Dances from the Bauyn Manuscript (Pavel Kolesnikov)

Information

Composer: Louis Couperin

• (01) Suite in D minor
• (08) Allemande Grave in F major
• (09) Chaconne in F major
• (10) Chaconne ou Passacaille in G minor
• (11) Suite in G minor
• (16) Tombeau de Mr de Blancrocher
• (17) Suite in A major
• (22) Pavanne in F sharp minor

Pavel Kolesnikov, piano
Date: 2018
Label: Hyperion
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68224

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Review

For his latest Hyperion release, the immensely talented Pavel Kolesnikov has taken up an extraordinarily daunting challenge. In his decision to record Louis Couperin, he has chosen a corner of the French 17th-century harpsichord literature perhaps least susceptible to translation to other instruments. He has gone to considerable lengths to pull it off, including the use of two separate actions of distinct character in the Yamaha CFX concert grand he plays. One certainly understands the motivation. Louis, greatest of all the Couperins save for his nephew François, is a fascinating composer. What survives of his strikingly original and often dissonant music spans scarcely a decade of his all-too-brief life.

Of particular interest are Couperin’s quasi-improvisatory unmeasured preludes, a legacy of the Renaissance lutenists that would become a special province of the French clavecinistes. But it may be these characteristic pieces, structurally and texturally dependent on the rich overtones of the loosely strung harpsichord, that sacrifice most when transferred to the piano, with its taut steel strings and greatly reduced overtones. The unmeasured preludes that open the D minor and A major suites here come across more as schematic diagrams of pitches than surges of emotion, enhanced by the sympathetic vibration of strings.

The dances face similar impediments. Translating their precise, lean, sure-footed lines to the piano seems the equivalent of attempting to reproduce a fine 17th-century engraving using a felt-tip marker. Kolesnikov varies the tempos of the dances. No one would mistake one of his sarabandes for a gigue. But somehow the dances’ innate character remains elusive. Importation, however subtle, of the piano’s greater dynamic spectrum hinders rather than helps, obscuring more than it clarifies.

Very few pianists of Kolesnikov’s generation share his abundance of intelligence, sensitivity, imagination and sheer instrumental mastery.

-- Patrick Rucker, Gramophone

More reviews:
MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 10 / SOUND QUALITY: 10
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=15412
https://www.allmusic.com/album/louis-couperin-mw0003150745
https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/louis-couperin-dances-from-the-bauyn-manuscript-pavel-kolesnikov/
https://www.audaud.com/louis-couperin-dances-bauyn-manuscript-suites-pavel-kolesnikov-piano-hyperion/

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Louis Couperin (c. 1626 – 29 August 1661) was a French Baroque composer and performer, the first historically important member of the Couperin family. Couperin worked as organist of the Church of St. Gervais in Paris and as musician at the court. He quickly became one of the most prominent Parisian musicians, establishing himself as a harpsichordist, organist, and violist, but his career was cut short by his early death at the age of thirty-five. None of Couperin's music was published during his lifetime, but manuscript copies of some 200 pieces survive, some of them only rediscovered in the mid-20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Couperin

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Pavel Kolesnikov was born in 1989 in Novosibirsk. He studied at Moscow State Conservatory with Sergei Dorensky, at London’s Royal College of Music with Norma Fisher, and at Brussels’s Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel with Maria João Pires. Kolesnikov became winner of the Honens International Piano Competition in 2012, and was a member of BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists in 2014-16. He has performed with orchestras across Canada, Malta, Russia and Brazil, as well as with all the major UK orchestras. Kolesnikov has also given recitals in South Korea, Japan, Spain and Germany.
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/a.asp?a=A2503

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