Couperin: Leçons de Ténèbres

François Couperin (1668-1733) served as harpsichordist to Louis XIV and was famed for reforming elegant chamber music of the French court in the more impassioned Italian style of the time. For his Leçons de Ténèbres (c. 1713-17), a setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, “Couperin le Grand” fused devotional expression with a dramatic performing style embodied here by sopranos Lucy Crowe and Elizabeth Watts. Two Trio Sonatas and a Stabat Mater by Sébastien de Brossard (1655-1730) round out this luminous programme.