A world renowned international soloist and harpsichord teacher at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Francesco Corti embarks a collaboration with Arcana with a musical journey through the manuscripts of the Bach family, beginning with the two books belonging to Johann Sebastian’s brother (the Möller and Andreas Bach manuscripts) and leading to the famous Büchleine for Anna Magdalena and Wilhelm Friedemann. The programme presents three major keyboard works by J. S. Bach (BWV 815, 992 and 998) that are preserved in ‘domestic’ copies.

"Bach saved my life… You always feel in his music that God is present somehow." This is not empty declamation. It is a deep confession of harpsichord player Zuzana Růžičková, a survivor of the inconceivable horrors of the Nazi concentration camps of Terezín, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. She always felt that Bach's music was one of the things that helped her survive. In a certain way this is also true the other way around: Zuzana Růžičková gave new life to Bach's music by persistently promoting the use of harpsichord (as opposed to commonly used piano) in performing Bach repertoire in concert. She was the very first person to initiate the gigantic project of recording the complete harpsichord concertos composed by Bach.

Melancholy Grace is a poetic collection of keyboard music from the 16th and 17th centuries by composers from Italy, the Netherlands, England and Germany, including Frescobaldi, Luigi Rossi, Picchi, Luzzaschi, Sweelinck, Dowland, Bull and Gibbons. The French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau has conceived the album as a sombre, but eloquent dialogue between two contrasting voices: melancholy conveyed through chromaticism and melancholy conveyed through the musical expression of tears and weeping. Each voice finds expression through a different instrument: a 16th century Italian virginal (a compact harpsichord) for the ‘tears’ and a modern replica of an 18th century harpsichord for the ‘chromatic’ pieces.

Bernardo Pasquini, composer, harpsichordist and organist renowned in his day as virtuoso keyboard player, he was the most important Italian composer of keyboard music between Frescobaldi and Domenico Scarlatti.

Formé au Sweelinck Conservatorium d’Amsterdam, au Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles et à la Sorbonne à Paris, passionné par la facture des instruments anciens, imprégné de culture classique française et fasciné par le Japon, le claveciniste Frédérick Haas s’interroge sur le sens à donner aujourd’hui aux musiques des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles en empruntant des chemins atypiques. Celui des croisements de cultures, des mises en regard, des expériences humaines et artistiques – "autant d’antidotes à certains stéréotypes véhiculés par l’approche dite “historiquement informée” d’aujourd’hui".

L'influence de Francois Couperin sur ses contemporains et ses successeurs de l'école francaise de clavecin voire même à travers l'europe, tel est le programme éminement didactique de Davitt Moroney dans son pur style des années 1990, celui des émissions qu'il animait sur France Musiques.

The Complete works for Harpsichord of Jean Henry D'Anglebert performed by Karen Flint on the 1627 & 1635 Ioannes Ruckers Harpsichord and the Anonymous c. 1690 Parisian harpsichord inscribed "Ioannes Ruckers, 1620' from the Flint Collection of Antique Instruments with notes by Bruce Gustafson.

With this volume 4 in a complete recording of Bach’s keyboard works whose ingenuity has been underlined by every reviewer (e.g. Gramophone, July 2020), Benjamin Alard continues to explore the Weimar period, known as that of his ‘early mastery’. After À la française, we turn to Italy, where the Vivaldian concerto reigned in Venice. The young Bach created here a wonderful space of freedom between the transcriber and the improviser. For ‘if transcription is a matter of freedom, it is also a matter of powerful imagination: each piece on this recording transports us into a Venetian universe that fascinated Bach as much as it inspired him’, as Benjamin Alard demonstrates on three exceptional instruments.

Having already attracted attention for his exceptional gifts, Bach entered the service of the Weimar court at the age of twenty-three. This was the start of the period known as his ‘early maturity’, in which his formal and expressive experiments reflect a significant interest in French music and ‘la belle danse’. The close intertwining of French and German styles is the dominant feature of this third volume in Benjamin Alard’s recording of the complete organ and harpsichord works.

Nicolas Lebègue (1631-1702) is largely represented in the record catalogue by albums of organ music. Yet his pieces for harpsichord are no less distinctive and appealing in their way, and this new recording presents a rare chance to survey that side of his output in toto.

When, around 1705, Johann Sebastian Bach came to write his Toccatas, this form of keyboard music had already been known for over a century, and was strongly influenced by Italian, English and Flemish ideas. The Toccata was a product of both vocal and instrumental music, and preserved many of its distinctive features.

The E. Power Biggs recording of Bach's six Trio Sonatas needs little introduction. Recorded by Biggs in 1966, the performances have been a staple of the CBS/Sony discography. These six sonatas are usually performed on organ, but they excellently accomodate the pedal harpsichord. Generally thought of as a practice instrument for organists, the pedal harpsichord becomes an ideal performing tool with E. Power Biggs at the helm.

This 2-fer of Scott Ross' Goldberg Variations, plus selections from Frescobaldi's 1616 &1627 publications could hardly be better. The clarity of the lines in the Goldbergs alone is worth the price. The Frescobaldi selections are fresh and pleasing. As always, Mr. Ross plays in a lively, incisive, yet unaffected manner.

The harpsichord music of François Couperin (1668 –1733) is without question some of the instrument’s most important repertoire. His treatise L’art de toucher le clavecin [The Art of Harpsichord Playing, 1716] outlines the principles of good harpsichord playing, with information on ornaments, fingerings, and touch, and includes eight preludes and an Allemande. His four monumental volumes of harpsichord music contain over 230 individual pieces, and rare is the player who undertakes learning the entirety of this body of work. Davitt Moroney, a performer-scholar who has already recorded the complete works of Byrd and Louis Couperin, as well as the complete Well-Tempered Clavier, is currently recording these works for the Plectra label on magnificent antiques from the Flint Collection in Wilmington, Delaware.

Kenneth Gilbert’s complete recording of François Couperin’s Pièces de clavecin in 1970 was much more than a pioneering venture; he offered interpretations as virtuosic as they were elegant – and on a historical harpsichord. This first volume, devoted to the first three Ordres of the Premier Livre, conveys the infinite nobility of the immediately recognisable language forged by the most poetic French composer of the Grand Siècle. A thrilling step back in time with this great artist, who was to exert considerable influence on an entire generation of harpsichordists that followed.