Gaspard Le Roux: Complete Suites
Daniel-Ben Pienaar (piano)
Pienaar's rendition of them on a modern piano sounds perfectly natural. He also takes advantage of Le Roux's compositional flexibility to make some choice additions, elaborations and amendments....
Gaspard Le Roux: Complete Suites
Daniel-Ben Pienaar (piano)
Purchase product
Pienaar's rendition of them on a modern piano sounds perfectly natural. He also takes advantage of Le Roux's compositional flexibility to make some choice additions, elaborations and amendments....
About
For his tenth Avie release, Daniel-Ben Pienaar flies the flag for the enigmatic French composer Gaspard Le Roux, by re-imagining his only published work - the exquisite "Pieces de clavessin" from 1705 - for its first ever recording on the modern piano.
The original, mercurial manuscript presents different versions of these undeniably charming pieces - for solo harpsichord, harpsichord duet and trio sonata. Daniel-Ben distils the performing possibilities, explaining, "For this first recording of these Suites on piano - in both the do-it-yourself spirit of the score, and also in that of inviting the modern listener to treat Le Roux's set as 'art object' - I have fashioned a version where I conflate Le Roux's solo harpsichord and trio iterations of the same music, adding some of the extra inner voices or descants from the trios to the keyboard version on repeats, but in such a way that the delicate poise and occasionally elliptical voice-leading of the original keyboard score would still be largely maintained."
The result is by turns brilliant, pleasing, witty and affecting.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
Christmas 2025
Pienaar's rendition of them on a modern piano sounds perfectly natural. He also takes advantage of Le Roux's compositional flexibility to make some choice additions, elaborations and amendments. The result is an attractive and distinctive collection of keyboard music that looks back to early masters like Louis Couperin and Jean-Henri Anglebert and forward to later innovators such as Jean-Philippe Rameau and François Couperin.
Awards Issue 2025
The super-clarity and precisely controlled articulation of his playing are of course major pluses...but so is his engagement with the music's striking and seductive life-force. Every piece has an individual character.