"For this recording, I have chosen Couperin at his most dramatic, powerful and often tragically brilliant. The Troisiême Ordre is a finely chosen selection of pieces in C minor and major. While Couperin may have had no specific overall architecture in mind for this selection, he is successful in offering us great variety, ranging from the classical theatricality of La Ténébreuse and the tender sighing of Les Regrets to the riotous clowning of Les Matelotes Provençales. Let us remember that when he gathered the music for his first book of harpsichord works, he was amassing selections from over 20 years of composing. This is truly a retrospective collection of harpsichord pieces."

This collection of pieces in D is the longest in all the books of Couperin and contains several masterpieces. Grace and nobility seem to reign. In his official portrait Couperin has one hand on the score to “Les Idées Heureuses”. It is a work of sonorous nostalgia and melancholy. ” La Garnier” a tribute work, sings out in the tenor range of the harpsichord combining sensuousness and rhetoric in a most poetical homage. “La Terpsicore” delineates dance gestures and paints the muse of movement. Debussy in his preludes owes much to the spirit and genius of this piece. The dance movements live in the courtly world of the chateau (the gavotte and courantes) or the rough and tumble world of the barnyard or village square (rigaudon and passepied). There are suites within the suite (for Diane) and there is not one genre or character piece that is not inspired in its choices of delicate dissonance and voluptuous harmonies.