Michel Corrette’s name will be familiar to French Baroque buffs, his copious output perhaps less so; his better-known works include some sonatas useful to wind players and about two dozen Concertos comiques, into which he incorporated some of the music he had written for the Opéra-Comique and Parisian fair theatres. He is also known for publishing a staggering number of teaching methods for everything from violin to voice and flute to mandolin, a valuable source for students of performance practice. That he also wrote 18 books of keyboard music seems a well-kept secret – somewhat perversely, as he was a professional organist – but for Olivier Baumont Corrette is ‘a genuine love story that has lasted since childhood’. Baumont’s debut recording (on LP in 1982) was of the 1734 Premier livre de pièces de clavecin, and it is to these that he returns now in a re encounter he likens to his ‘own personal madeleine’.

Published the year after Couperin’s death, the Premier livre is unmistakably French, consisting of preludes, dances and character pieces, though Italian influence is also evident: ‘La prise de Jéricho’, which ends the fourth suite, is clearly in Vivaldian ritornello form. It would be a mistake, however, to expect the poetry of a Couperin: Corrette’s gift is one of theatre-infused wit and unpretentiousness, and perhaps only ‘Les idées heureuses’, ‘L’héroïne’ and the remarkable study in space and distance that is ‘L’étoiles’ attempt something more profound. Rather, Corrette’s titles and the naivety of his responses – heard, for instance, in the downward tinkling of ‘Les giboulées de Mars’ (‘March showers’), the gabbling ‘La babillarde’ (‘The voluble one’) or the postillion of ‘Le courier’ – put me in mind of the images you might find in a child’s piano tutor. Harder though. Lively finger skills are required at times, not least the handful of pieces Baumont inserts from Corrette’s other publications, including two variation sets and the remarkable Carillon (which in places seems more Rick Wakeman than French Baroque).

Baumont performs with a style, affection and nimble skill that conveys the music’s cheerful charm. I only wish he could have dug a little deeper in those more thoughtful pieces. His 1768 harpsichord by Joannes Goermans has a crisp and characterful tone which, perhaps, over time, is just the wrong side of comfortable; maybe a slightly less close recording would have made it more grateful.