Lebègue: Les Pièces de Clavessin, Books I & II

Alvarez, Agustín

95671

Nicolas Lebègue (1631-1702) spent most of his life at the Court of the Sun King Louis XIV in Versailles, where he was court organist, but also played an active part in all of the manifold musical activities at the court, such as playing the harpsichord for the King, participating in the court orchestra and accompanying famous visiting musicians. • Lebègue played an important role in the development of the Suite, establishing the now common order of Prelude-Allemande-Courante-Sarabande-Menuet-Gigue. He also introduces a writing system for the “preludes non-mesurés”, the introductory movement of the suite in which improvisation plays an important part. • In this new recording Augustín Álvarez plays the complete two books of Suites: “I have tried to approach this beautiful music not only as a musician, but from the point of view of dance, of a dancer, trying to understand the inmensity of codes, lost for us today, which were so important at the time, as well as the physical and intellectual attitudes which conform the sublime art of movement of French Baroque dance and which Nicolas Lebègue slowly reveals to us as a ceremonial master.”

CD

8.01.2020

5028421956718