Jacquet De La Guerre: Complete Harpsichord Works

Lanfranco, Francesca

Acclaimed in her own time as ‘the wonder of our century’, Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729) occupies a place of outstanding importance in the cultural history of 17th and 18th-century France as a composer and harpsichordist. Her prodigious talents were recognized from when she played and sang to the court of King Louis XIV at the tender age of five years old. Her first book of harpsichord suites was published in 1687 and dedicated to her patron the king. The style of their brief dance movements inherits the characteristics of lute music, including the unbarred preludes, which evoke a refined taste for improvisation. By the time that her second book of suites was published 20 years later, her life had been marked by the deaths of her only son, her father and her husband at the age of only 46; Jacquet de la Guerre took up composing once again as a wealthy, lonely widow. These later suites omit the preludes, but the writing within them is more florid and complex, offering a stiff challenge both to the technique and the imagination of the performer. The D minor Suite is conceived on the grandest scale, opening with a poignantly rhetorical piece entitled ‘La Flamande’ and closing ten movements later with a grand Chaconne. The suites are recorded anew here on a 1982 Fernando Granziera instrument after a 1736 model by Jena-Henri Hemsch; the soloist is the Italian harpsichordist Francesca Lanfranco, who is herself a noted teacher of harpsichord.

Price: $25.98