A favourite musician of King Louis XIV, François Couperin produced a vast canon of works for harpsichord. His four Livres de clavecin contain some 220 exquisitely crafted pieces, which, in Olivier Baumont’s words are “often more enigmatic than one might think, but at the same time sometimes simpler than they appear… They resist traditional analysis just as much as they hold out against a poetical explanation of their titles. The harpsichordist finds himself face to face with a very real magician, a composer both conscious and certain of his ability to manipulate our sensibilities and our emotions.”
