Pièces De Caractère

It took no more than a short step from parade to parody to amuse the young Louis XV, even when it involved a sub-ject as solemn and sophisticated as military art: On the 26th of last month, twenty members of the Swiss Guards Regiment engaged in a dance exercise, holding their drawn swords in their hands, beneath the windows of the King’s apartment in Marly, to the sound of a drum, a fife and a violin, with a Harlequin and a Scaramouche in attendance. A corporal commanded this comic military ballet which gave a great deal of pleasure. Mercure de France, March 1726 The idea of an opera for the harpsichord gradually came to me as I was thinking about this amazing anecdote, guiding me in the choice and arrangement of the pieces on this recording. The shade of “the incomparable” Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), the great tragédie lyrique craftsman, seems to float over many of the pieces that Jean-François Dandrieu (1682-1738) wrote for the instrument. The emphasis he places on major dance movements such as La Naturèle and La Figurée, his inclination towards descriptive and programmatic pieces and, of course, the frequent evocation of mythological figures, all confirm this allusion to the drama that he so admired. In France, Jean-François Dandrieu’s harpsichord works offer one of the richest treasure troves for the instrument. For his first solo recording, the harpsichordist Marouan Mankar-Bennis has dreamt up an operatic tragedy through a se-lection of his Character Pieces offering both intimacy and many marvels. This is because it was as a poet that Dandrieu cultivated the art of evocation using a subtle combination of touch, timbres and registrations, turning the harpsichord into a new “Lyre of Orpheus”.