Gaspard Le Roux was active in Paris as a composer during the later years of the seventeenth and first decade of the eighteenth centuries. Apart from his music, of which the little that is known was printed, we know hardly anything about this shadowy figure in French musical life. But in his own time Le Roux was evidently quite a prominent musician, and the fact that Bach’s pupil, Krebs, had copied one of Le Roux’s suites – Bruce Gustafson mentions this in his informative note – is some indication of his standing further afield.
Le Roux’s suites – there are seven of them – were published in Paris in 1705, and were not exclusively designed as harpsichord music. In fact Le Roux wrote out the parts in such a way that the pieces could be played by two melody instruments and figured bass, by a solo harpsichord or by two harpsichords. It is this last realization that has been chosen by Mitzi Meyerson and Lisa Crawford, who play two mid-eighteenth-century French harpsichords. These highly adaptable Pieces de clavessin offer in such performances wonderful opportunities for resonant sonority and imaginative elaboration, over and above the specified ornaments that are such a distinctive feature of harpsichord music of the grand siecle. None of this is lost on Meyerson and Crawford, whose rhythmic playing and vital responses to Le Roux’s inventive talent make for engaging entertainment.
Each suite contains the three basic ingredients of allemande, courante and sarabande; thereafter a profusion of preludes, menuets, gavottes and other galanteries provide the complement. There are many splendid pieces here, ranging from noble allemandes and sprightly courantes, to sarabandes whose expressive puissance and often melancholy inflexions make them among the most rewarding of all the assembled dances. Two of them seem to me worthy of special mention, that belonging to the Sixth Suite, variously recalling both Couperin and Rameau, and another belonging to the Third Suite, eloquent, flowing, and with some deliciously dissonant moments, highlighted by the equally delicious, but astringent tuning that gives a bite to much else in the programme. A stylish performance, with supple body, though in no way lacking in sensibility. Recommended.'