Sophie Yates - Claude-Bénigne Balbastre: Pièces de clavecin (2011)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 466 Mb | Total time: 76:29 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Chandos | # CHAN 0777 | Recorded: 2005
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 466 Mb | Total time: 76:29 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Chandos | # CHAN 0777 | Recorded: 2005
Composer Claude-Bénigne Balbastre came at the end of the French Baroque keyboard tradition that produced François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau. Composed in 1759, these pieces look back toward the tradition of French harpsichord music, with its individual piece titles designating various members of the French nobility and their individual personalities. Thirty years after Couperin announced the reunification of French and Italian tastes, they show only light influence of Italian style; the clearly diatonic, periodic Allegro tune of "La Laporte," track 16, is the exception. Nor does Balbastre attempt to take after the intellectual density and harmonic complexity of Rameau's keyboard music. Instead his little musical portraits have a mostly pleasant, pastoral mien, with harmonic touches that are unusual and evocative rather than difficult.