Couperin: Concerts Royaux Pierre Gallon & Matthieu Boutineau

• François Couperin (1668 - 1733): Concert Royal No. 1 in G (Version for 2 Harpsichords):
• 1 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 1 in G (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Prélude. Gravement 02:34
• 2 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 1 in G (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Allemande. Légèrement 02:07
• 3 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 1 in G (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Sarabande. Mesuré 02:37
• 4 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 1 in G (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Menuet en trio 01:12
• 5 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 1 in G (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Gavotte 00:48
• 6 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 1 in G (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Gigue. Légèrement 00:59
• Concert Royal No. 2 in D (Version for 2 Harpsichords and Theorbo):
• 7 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 2 in D (Version for 2 Harpsichords and Theorbo): Prélude. Gracieusement 01:35
• 8 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 2 in D (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Allemande fuguée. Gaiement 02:25
• 9 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 2 in D (Version for 2 Harpsichords and Theorbo): Air tendre 03:40
• 10 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 2 in D (Version for 2 Harpsichords and Theorbo): Air contrefugué. Vivement 03:00
• 11 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 2 in D (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Échos. Tendrement 03:40
• Concert Royal No. 3 in A (Version for 2 Harpsichords):
• 12 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 3 in A (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Prélude. Lentement 01:47
• Pièces de clavecin, Book 2, Ordre No. 9:
• 13 Couperin: Pièces de clavecin, Book 2, Ordre No. 9: Allemande for 2 Harpsichords 04:27
• Concert Royal No. 3 in A (Version for 2 Harpsichords):
• 14 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 3 in A (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Allemande. Légèrement 02:07
• 15 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 3 in A (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Courante 01:52
• 16 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 3 in A (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Sarabande grave 03:04
• 17 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 3 in A (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Gavotte 01:18
• 18 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 3 in A (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Musette. Naïvement 02:36
• 19 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 3 in A (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Chaconne légère 03:11
• Concert Royal No. 4 in E (Version for 2 Harpsichords):
• 20 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 4 in E (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Prélude. Gravement 01:49
• 21 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 4 in E (Version for 2 Harpsichords and Baroque Guitar): Allemande. Légèrement 01:46
• 22 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 4 in E (Version for 2 Harpsichords and Baroque Guitar): Courante française. Galamment 02:10
• 23 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 4 in E (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Courante à l'italienne. Gaiement 02:56
• 24 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 4 in E (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Sarabande. Très tendrement 03:20
• 25 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 4 in E (Version for 2 Harpsichords): Rigaudon. Légèrement et marqué 01:30
• 26 Couperin: Concert Royal No. 4 in E (Version for 2 Harpsichords and Baroque Guitar): Forlane en rondeau. Gaiement 02:57
• Total Runtime 01:01:27

Info for Couperin: Concerts Royaux

Pierre Gallon and Matthieu Boutineau offer us an opportunity to rediscover Couperin’s Concerts Royaux in a version for two harpsichords, a rare combination, yet one of which the composer to the Sun King was especially fond. Here is an interpretation at once brilliant and moving of these works full of tenderness, gaiety and invention, a veritable stylistic turning point between the twilight of the Grand Siècle and the dawn of the Enlightenment.

Pierre Gallon, harpsichord
Matthieu Boutineau, harpsichord
Thibaut Roussel, theorbe

Pierre Gallon
grew up in a home bursting at the seams with instruments of all kinds, a limitless playground. At the age of ten, he realised that the harpsichord was the most natural means of expression for him. Bibiane Lapointe and Thierry Maeder guided him to the doors of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and its early music classes, taught by Olivier Baumont and Blandine Rannou. He graduated in 2010 with two Premiers Prix and top honours. During his student years, his encounters with Blandine Verlet, Elisabeth Joyé and Pierre Hantaï were aesthetic epiphanies that profoundly shaped his approach to the instrument.

For Pierre Gallon, music is first and foremost a collective adventure: one that still leads him today to invest his energies in high-profile ensembles (notably Pygmalion, directed by Raphaël Pichon, of which he is the principal harpsichordist) with which he has made some thirty recordings. But this adventure follows other, equally captivating paths when Pierre explores the immense solo repertory for harpsichord, from the Renaissance to the present day.

In 2014, his first solo recording, devoted to Pierre Attaingnant, made a powerful impression. Since then, he has been invited to give recitals at many festivals, including La Roque-d’Anthéron, Saintes, La Folle Journée de Nantes, Oude Muziek Utrecht, Poznań Baroque, the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music, and Royaumont Abbey, where he recorded his second disc, celebrating the music of Joseph Haydn (2017). His two most recent albums, released in 2020 and 2022, one imagining the meeting of Couperin and Froberger in Paris, the other presenting a previously unrecorded version of Bach’s French Suites, have been enthusiastically received by the press (two Diapasons d’Or, ffff in Télérama, CHOC and ‘Coup de cœur’ in Classica, Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Disc of the Year of RCF Radio).

Pierre also enjoys diverse experiences with his fellow keyboard players, performing with Bertrand Cuiller and his ensemble Le Caravansérail, and with Bande de Clavecins. He appears regularly in concert alongside the viol player Lucile Boulanger, the soprano Alice Foccroulle and the writer Pascal Quignard, or accompanied by his friends in Ground Floor and Les Harpies.

Matthieu Boutineau
A native of the Deux-Sèvres region, Matthieu Boutineau discovered the organ with Olivier Vernet and Francis Jacob, the harpsichord with Blandine Verlet, Olivier Houette, Aline Zylberajch, Olivier Baumont and Jan Willem Jansen, and early music with Jean Maillet. He has been the continuo keyboardist for a number of early music ensembles, and has performed at various festivals in France and abroad. He has taken part in 2 recordings with Faenza: L'Astrée (Alpha); Amorosa Fenice (Agogique), and 2 with Les Ambassadeurs: Tempesta (Glossa); Telemann concertos (Alpha).In 2010, he won 1st Prize at the Bellelay organ competition in Switzerland. In May 2015, he took part in the Queen's Flying Squadron, alongside Josèphe Cottet, Fiona-Emilie Poupard and Antoine Touche, winning the 1st Prize and the Audience Prize at the 1st Val de Loire International Early Music Competition, presided over by William Christie.

Since 2015, Matthieu has been co-artistic director of Mensa Sonora, alongside Gabriel Grosbard, succeeding Jean Maillet. He is also the titular organist at Notre-Dame de Niort.

Matthieu is also involved in music and friendship in his native region, accompanying Les Violons de Poche, an ensemble from Poitou directed by Anne-Violaine Fardet, and L'écarquilleur d'oreilles, a music association based in Niort.

Thibaut Roussel
After studying classical guitar and sound, he specialised in the interpretation of early music, studying the theorbo, early guitars and Renaissance and Baroque lutes at the Conservatoire de Versailles in Benjamin Perrot's class.

He has always had a passion for the French musical heritage of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and now focuses on rediscovering forgotten composers. He performs as a soloist and continuo player in specialist music ensembles such as Ensemble Correspondances (Sébastien Daucé), Pygmalion (Raphaël Pichon), l'Escadron Volant de la Reine and Le Poème Harmonique (Vincent Dumestre), Le Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles (Olivier Schneebeli), the ensemble La Rêveuse (Benjamin Perrot and Florence Bolton), the Théâtre de l'Incrédule (Benjamin Lazar), with the violist Robin Pharo, the singer Marc Mauillon, the mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac... Particularly interested in new and contemporary music, as well as its performance on period instruments, he has premiered pieces specially written for the theorbo and instruments of the lute and guitar family at various recitals and festivals (Montpellier, Versailles, etc.).

Booklet for Couperin: Concerts Royaux