Duphly's music belongs to the final stage of the French harpsichord school. Between 1744 and 1768 he published four volumes of pieces which, in their different ways, charmingly complement the genre paintings of Chardin and Fragonard. The music is a little uneven in quality but the finest pieces are rewarding to play and pungently evocative in their mood. The darkly coloured F minor ''La Forqueray'', a tribute to the great bass-viol player, is perhaps indicative of the cult of feeling that developed in mid-eighteenth-century France. It's a piece which haunts the memory and is one of Duphly's noblest utterances.
Mitzi Meyerson has chosen her pieces carefully, interspersing those on a larger scale, such as ''La Forqueray'', ''La Felix'', ''La Vanlo'' and ''La Victoire'' with more modest rondeaux, menuets, a courante and so forth. Her technique and sense of style are assured yet I did not always feel that she reached the heart of the music; the innate grandeur of ''La Felix'', for example, was conveyed to me only intermittently. The subtle language of ''Les Graces'', on the other hand, was realized with an effective feeling for theatrical gesture. Mitzi Meyerson's rhythmic sense serves her well in this repertoire and ensures a natural gracefulness throughout. Her account of the slight but attractive ''La de Villeneuve'' delicately captures the elusive qualities of the piece. In an altogether more heroic vein is ''La Victoire'', whose dashing figures betray Italian influence. Meyerson gives a dazzling performance of it, perhaps a shade too fast for me, but impressive all the same.
The sleeve, a very beautiful one incorporating a tinted engraving by Delatre, is reticent about identifying the harpsichord itself; but it sounds appropriate for this music and is recorded in a pleasantly resonant acoustic. I would have marginally preferred something more closely approximating the acoustic of a salon, but it is of small importance when there is such clarity of detail as we have here.'