With this two-disc set, Bertrand Cuiller launches a new complete cycle of the solo harpsichord works of François Couperin that will be supplemented with a selection of vocal, chamber and organ works. Cuiller takes as his theme – a loose one – the idea of the stage, including here six ordres that have more or less specific allusions to the theatre or theatrical persona, among them the 11th ordre with its magnificent ‘five-act’ sequence of character sketches lampooning street musicians and entertainers. Subsequent volumes will be organised thematically and with an ear to the colours Cuiller hears in specifics keys and key groupings.

Cuiller’s approach is robust and rollicking, appropriately dramatic and alert to Couperin’s occasional taste for spectacle. The extended theatrical sequence in the 11th ordre is even more muscular and demonstrative than Rousset’s version, also for Harmonia Mundi (Cuiller studied with Rousset at the Conservatoire National Supérieur). Cuiller’s harpsichord, a 1977 copy of an anonymous 17th-century French instrument, produces a ferocious volume of sound in the third and fifth acts of the minstrelsy suite, leaving no doubt about Couperin’s sceptical take on the closed-shop guild of musicians satirised in this collection of miniatures (the spelling of the title was typically transparent and enigmatic: ‘Les fastes de la grande et ancienne Mxnxstrxndxsx’.

But it isn’t just the vigour of Cuiller’s interpretations that delights. In the third act he uses registration to create an appealing and menacing sense of contrast between the left-hand and right-hand dialogue, with the lower octave figures of the boiteux or peg-legged line amplified into comic grotesquerie. Compare Cuiller with Kenneth Gilbert’s more sober, straightforward rendition and you get a keen sense of the younger musician’s intent. Couperin has multiple alter egos and Cuiller is determined to explore all of them.

And yet, it is in those pieces when we think we have the pure Couperin, sentimental, delicate, nuanced and introspective, that Cuiller really finds his voice. The second part of the ‘Baccanales’ movement from the fourth ordre or the ‘La fine Madelon’ from the 20th ordre are particularly appealing, with the harpsichordist seeming to noodle his way through the music with an improvisatory sense of discovery. All of this raises high expectations for the rest of the series.