Louis Couperin was a pupil of Chambonnieres generally recognized as founder of the great French harpsichord school. After his nephew Francois Le grand'', Louis Couperin was undoubtedly the most gifted member of a musically illustrious family. His harpsichord music amounts to somewhat over 130 pieces all of which Davitt Moroney has included in this impressive and largely satisfying survey on four mid-price CDs. As I remarked in a review of the five-LP set in 1984, this repertory is striking for its invention, variety of character and on frequent occasions its elegiac content. This last quality can be found time and again in the chaconnes whose pervasive melancholy is for me an irresistable, indeed perhaps the irresistible feature of his style; but it is also present in many of the sarabandes, preludes and more consciously, of course, in his single essay in that peculiarly French musical-poetic form, the ''tombeau''. Couperin's tombeau commemorates the lutenist Blancrocher who fell downstairs to his death after imbibing to excess.
Moroney has lavished his musical expertise, scholastic and practical, on this giant project and has matched the fine craftsmanship and noble gestures of the composer with performances that are stylish and affectionate. There will always be an element of controversy over the playing of the chameleon''preludes non mesures'', characterized by semibreve notation without regular bars and without time signature. Such freedom allows for many interpretative possibilities and few performers given the chance, would settle for less than two. Harmonia Mundi, understandably, have not afforded Moroney that luxury but I can happily accept the carefully thought-out interpretations which are recorded here. Elsewhere, Moroney invests the music with colour and graceful gesture. Chaconnes move with an easy rhythmic pulse, sonorous, autumnal in spirit and imbued with a sombre courtly grandeur. The simpler dances such as the ''Branle de Basque'', ''La Pastourelle'' and ''Canaries'' are treated in a lively manner though, as I remarked in my previous notice, the profusion of allemandes and, to an even greater extent, courantes, seems at times to defy Moroney's inventive powers. Couperin, too, however, has his off moments and I felt, in several of the groupings that too many courantes were in danger of spoiling the broth. But these are not discs which should necessarily be listened to from beginning to end all in one sitting; Couperin grouped his pieces according to keys leaving the performer to make up his own suites. Audiences might well do the same and more quickly discover the wealth of expressive nuances which lie beneath forms that on the surface appear deceptively similar. Richly inventive and extended pieces such as the F sharp minor Pavanne deserve to be listened to on their own; yet the Pavanne, which occupies the concluding track of a disc with a playing time of 78 minutes is ill-placed to make the impact on a listener of which it is unquestionably capable.
Three different harpsichords are featured in the recording. The earliest, built in Antwerp in 1671 subsequently passed through the workshops of two great French harpsichord makers of the following century, Messrs Blanchet and Taskin. The other two are eighteenth-century instruments. Slight distortion which occurred on the LPs as a result of generously filled sides is absent from the CD reissue. The instruments come over clearly and resonantly and the booklet is carefully documented by Moroney himself. An impressive achievement which deserves to be widely disseminated.'