According to accounts Armand-Louis Couperin was a likeable man whose life was led free from strife and uncorrupted by ambition, and it is not fanciful to say that such are the qualities which inform his harpsichord music. Mostly rather rangy character pieces, though with a sprinkling of dances, they show the bold textural richness of the later French harpsichordist-composers, if without the galloping imagination of figures such as Rameau, Balbastre or Royer. Instead, they prefer to inhabit a contented rococo world, into which they bring considerable professional polish.
If that makes the pieces sound predominantly 'pleasant', well, so they are… as agreeable a body of solo harpsichord music as any. But they are not vapid and neither are they easy, and we can be grateful that this selection has fallen to a player as technically assured and as musically sympathetic as Sophie Yates. Whether skipping through the wide-spread arpeggios and scales of La Semillante, firing out the repeated notes of Les Caqueteuses or tumbling down the helterskelters of L'Enjoué, she exudes invigorating virtuosity. Yet she shows delicacy, too, in the little gavottes and minuets, and sensitivity in the melancholy L'Affligée (a piece somewhat reminiscent of Rameau's L'Enharmonique). Her harpsichord, a copy of a 1749 Goujon, sounds superb, being resonant without boominess and clear-voiced without excessive punchiness of attack. One of Sophie Yates's best yet.