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Tempesta di Mare, Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, presented “The Royal Concert: Couperin’s Private Music for the King of France” Friday, December 10, in the Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields here in Chestnut Hill. The concert drew an audience that literally packed the church and that enthusiastically rewarded the eight chamber players of the orchestra with hearty and heart-warming applause.

Two points made their impressions on me during the performance and thereafter. First, Ken Lovett, St. Martin’s organist & choirmaster, remarked that it was unlikely that there was another concert dedicated solely the music of Francois Couperin in all of America, let alone one that drew a full house. The fact that this concert did so and did so not in center city but in Chestnut Hill is a testament to Tempesta di Mare’s success in building a faithful and trusting audience and Chestnut Hillers’ willingness to branch out beyond the traditional standard repertoire that rarely ventures into the baroque beyond Bach, Handel and Vivaldi.

Second, the final piano lesson I taught at Settlement Music School before driving to St. Martin’s was with an adult student who is currently working on Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, the French Impressionist’s homage to both the great French baroque composer and to six of his friends who died during World War I. Ravel based his piano suite (four of whose movements he subsequently orchestrated) on the very form Couperin himself used many a time for his harpsichord music: Prelude, Fugue, Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet and Toccata. It all points to Couperin’s influence not only from the mid-18th century into the early 20th century via Ravel but also into the first decade of the 21st century through students playing Ravel’s piano music inspired by Couperin.

Tempesta di Mare’s Friday night concert opened with harpsichordist Adam Pearl playing Les Baricades Mysterieuses, one of the few works by Couperin for solo harpsichord that is often played by pianists interested in the French baroque. Only Jean Philippe Rameau’s Aria & Variations in A minor equals it in continued contemporary interest among pianists. Pearl played Les Baricades Mysterieuses with such unaffected artistry that one couldn’t help but marvel at Couperin’s ability to strike so beautiful a nostalgic chord from so many centuries ago and wish that Tempesta di Mare programs more frequently provided the chance to hear more solo playing from this seminal member of the ensemble.

Along with Pearl, the ensemble included Gwyn Roberts on flute & recorder, Emlyn Ngai on violin, Sarah Cunningham on viola da gamba, Richard Stone on theorbo & guitar, Debra Nagy on oboe, Karina Fox on violin, and Eve Miller on viola da gamba & cello.

Couperin composed two major works based on the “affection” of being the nation of France: one a Sonata divided into seven characteristic movements and the other a Suite divided into seven movements based on popular dances of the era plus a Chaconne/Passacaille, a series of variations. The former, for a smaller ensemble, revealed an expressive intimacy that has characterized all the French arts for centuries while the latter, for fuller forces, dramatically projected Couperin’s gift for the grand gesture. The playing here, as it was throughout the concert, was elegantly phrased, superbly balanced, broadly emotional yet structurally secure. The concert also included Les Sylvains, La Sultane, the First Suite from Pieces de Violes and the Eighth Concert Dans le Gout Theatral.

While it may be true that the Germans – Bach and Handel – and the Italians – Corelli and Vivaldi – were the everlasting titans of the baroque, it’s equally true that the French – Couperin and Rameau – had their own distinctive voices and that all are worth hearing.

Tempesta di Mare | Chamber Players | Clara Rottsolk, soprano

“Unflaggingly attractive, revealing one beautifully crafted aria after another.”
— Gramophone, July 2010

Richard Stone, lute

• Silvius Leopold Weiss: Sonata 39 in C
• Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita in C Minor, BWV 997

Until the French invented the sofa in 1685, sitters had to be content, at best, with wooden armchairs, unsuited for lounging and other horizontal activities. The new innovation was so popular that cabinetmakers who specialized in sofas quickly became an important part of the Parisian work force.

Tempesta di Mare preceded its latest concert with an entertaining lecture by Penn scholar Joan deJean, the author of The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual. Dr. deJean is the kind of scholar who can talk about her subject with the ease of a raconteur who has volumes of anecdotes and facts stored in her head.

When we picture Louis XIV, Dr. deJean noted, we usually think of the Grand Monarch clothed in heavy robes that accentuated the monarchy’s grandeur. But Louis actually spent much of his time in smaller chateaus on the grounds of Versailles, wearing dressing gowns and slippers and enjoying private pleasures.

The lecture and the program notes made a critical contribution to a program devoted to the music François Couperin created for the private Sunday concerts that Louis enjoyed. The music that Tempesta’s chamber players presented at this event wasn’t as lively as some of their other offerings, but you could enjoy it on its own terms if you put yourself in the setting that produced it. Some people spend Sunday reading the New York Times. Louis XIV summoned Francois Couperin and his court chamber players.

Up from the shadows

One of the program’s highlights was the opportunity to hear solos by three musicians who normally occupy supporting roles: harpsichordist Adam Pearl, gamba player Sarah Cunningham and theorbo player Richard Stone.

In Baroque music, those three instruments normally provide an accompaniment for the lead players. The gamba— a cousin of the modern cello— plays the bass line while chording instruments such as the harpsichord and the theorbo (a bass lute with a neck about five feet long) fill in the harmonies.

Pearl got the evening off to a good start with a rolling, sensuous piece. Stone soloed with a rondo that Louis’s court lutenist, Robert de Visee, arranged from a Couperin harpsichord piece. This work is labeled Les Sylvains (“the forest sprites”) and Stone played it with an easy, natural style that fit the title and probably concealed a host of technical challenges.

There was nothing flashy or showy about Sarah Cunningham’s solo turn, but you could see why the program notes emphasized its virtuoso nature if you watched her left hand maneuver across the strings of her gamba. Many virtuoso pieces are interesting primarily because they feature dramatic contrasts and high-speed runs. Couperin avoided pointless display and placed technique at the service of art.

Royal attention spans

Couperin may have composed for a one-man audience, but he obviously understood audience psychology. The program contained more movements marked grave and gravement than I would have liked, but Couperin usually hopped to a friskier gaiement or anime about the time I started thinking a change of pace might be nice. Louis XIV lived in an earlier age than we moderns, so presumably he possessed a longer attention span and a larger appetite for slow, deep music.

Most of the pieces on the program teamed the continuo instruments with the voices of the wooden Baroque flute, the mellow Baroque oboe, and two Baroque violins. Gwyn Roberts’s flute sounded especially good. The Baroque flute is less penetrating than the modern metal flute and doesn’t always carry well, but that wasn’t a problem at this event.

Comic strip resemblance

Oboist Debra Nagy added proper helpings of brightness and tenderness to the mix, and at times the flute-oboe sonorities provided the main attraction of a passage. Violinists Emlyn Ngai and Karina Fox were deprived of the kind of showy interludes that composers usually hand violinists but they made their usual contributions to the program’s overall grace. In one particularly attractive moment toward the end of the concert, the two winds and the two violins played a sweet passage that sounded like a duet for the two sections.

The comic-strip king in the Wizard of Id has always reminded me of Louis XIV. The Sun King could be a real grade-A tyrant, but he was also a man of human foibles and virtues that inspire a kind of bemused affection. There’s much to be said for a guy who likes to lounge around on a sofa and listen to the music of Couperin