Deux représentants contrastés du clavecin français sous Louis XV, l’innovateur Jean-Baptiste Barrière (1707-1747) et le conservateur Bernard de Bury (1720-1785). Le premier, bordelais monté à Paris, séjourne en Italie (1736-1738) d’où il rapporte lyrisme, rythme, ornementation baroque, et un sens de la rupture rappelant CPE Bach. Le second, versaillais toute sa vie, rachète en 1741 à Marguerite-Antoinette Couperin pour 6.000 livres (15.000€) la charge « d’ordinaire de la Musique de la Chambre du Roy » transmise par son père François. Barrière compose des sonates « à l’italienne ». De Bury (anobli par Louis XVI) fidèle à l’esprit et à la forme de Couperin compose des suites françaises. De Barrière le surprenant savourons les somptueuses sonates transcrites par lui-même de ses sonates pour pardessus de viole. De Bury le classique dégustons les suites 3 et 4, celle-ci terminée par une longue et splendide chaconne variée. Interprétation étincelante (surtout dans Barrière) du jeune claveciniste italien Luca Quintavalle, sur une copie 2015 de clavecin Donzelague 1711, valorisée par une belle prise de son. Minutage très généreux (2 CDs, presque 160’), livret instructif mais seulement en anglais. Amateurs de beau clavecin, vous serez emballés ! (Benoît Desouches) The output of Jean Barrière (1707-1747) largely focuses around his own instrument, the cello, for which he wrote several books of suites and sonatas that have received sporadic attention on record. His work for harpsichord alone is much less well-known, though hardly less stylish. Like his contemporaries Jacques Duphly and Jean- Phillippe Rameau, Barrière entitled one of his pieces La Boucon for Anne-Jeanne Boucon, who later married Jean-Joseph de Mondonville: she must have been a woman of enviable poise and dignified beauty to judge from the music written in her honour. The first five of his six sonatas on this album are not French dance suites but transcriptions of Italian-inspired sonatas which he had originally composed for the smallest and highest instrument of the old family of viols, the pardessus de viole. The Italian influence can be traced in the bold and often unprepared dissonances which lend the sonatas both charm and unpredictable drama; the elaborate ornamentation, too, derives at least as much from the florid violin writing of Corelli and Geminiani as from the French harpsichord tradition. Bernard de Bury is a figure whose music was lost to history until very recently, when in 2009 the scholar-musician Ruta Bloomfield transcribed these pieces from obscure manuscripts and gave them their first performances in modern times. De Bury (1720-1785) was born into a musical family in Versailles, and there he stayed to serve the court. There are four suites, which in the style of Rameau and Couperin describe with wit and tender affection characters from ancient mythology and the composer’s own time, with melodies almost buried beneath cascades of exquisite decoration. In his dedication, de Bury states that he was fifteen years old when he wrote the suites, though such precocious youth could not be guessed from the music itself, which is far from immature. This coupling is unique on record; only one previous recording of de Bury’s work is presently available.
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