Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Another member joins the
harpsichordists’ century club

Virginia Pleasants, harpsichordist, clavichordist, and fortepianist, celebrates her 100th birthday on May 9, 2011. Born in Ohio, she attended Wittenberg University and completed her baccalaureate degree (with a major in piano) at the College-Conservatory of the University of Cincinnati. After private piano study in New York City, she won a first prize in the MacDowell Competition for Chamber Music.
Joining her husband, music critic Henry Pleasants, in Europe at the end of World War II, the couple lived in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany until settling in London in 1967. There Henry wrote music criticism for the International Herald-Tribune and Virginia served for twenty years as an adjunct lecturer at Cambridge University. Her frequent recitals of early music and her gift for keeping in touch with a wide circle of interested friends kept Virginia in the forefront of the British early musical scene. In turn she kept many, including readers of The Diapason, better informed about interesting happenings across the Atlantic. Pleasants’ discography includes four discs of Haydn Sonatas for The Haydn Society, and Quincy Porter’s Harpsichord Concerto, issued by Composers Recordings Incorporated.
Four years after the death of her husband in 2000, Virginia came “home” to Philadelphia. In 2002 she joined several friends in dedicatory festivities for Richard Kingston’s 300th harpsichord, playing music of Zipoli, Blow, Croft, Domenico Scarlatti, and Hungarian composer Tibor Serly. A longtime member of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society, Virginia gave a memorable lecture-recital on the fortepiano works of Philadelphia composer Alexander Reinagle for the Society’s 2007 conclave at the University of North Texas in Denton.
With her attainment of the century mark, Virginia Pleasants joins a select group of revival harpsichordists, including Marcelle de Lacour and Virginia Mackie. More research may be needed, but it seems that daily practicing, especially on a plucking instrument, might be considered beneficial for a long, as well as happy, life.

Comments and news items are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275. E-mails to [email protected].

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Guilty Pleasures: Reading, Listening, and Viewing

Recreational reading and several reissued recordings from the middle of the 20th century are recommended for pleasure, guilty or innocent:

The Soprano Wore Falsettos by Mark Schweizer (Hopkinsville, KY: St. James Music Press, 2006; ISBN 0-9721211-6-1)
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The fourth in Schweizer’s madcap series of liturgical mysteries regales readers with another adroit mingling of a Raymond Chandleresque typewritten tale presented within the story of churchly shenanigans at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in St. Germaine, North Carolina.
The current volume includes shoe polishing for Maundy Thursday (a contemporary worship successor to traditional foot washing); a Pirate Eucharist in which “Arrgh! Alleluia’s” abound; a restaurant called Buxtehooters; references to compositions by Scarlatti, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Fauré, Froberger, Beethoven, and Casals, with German beer, Fräuleins, AND a three-manual Flentrop organ [page 112!] for “local” color. Not to be overlooked is a fortuitously named character, the substitute organist Mrs. Agnes Day. Highly recommended for readers struggling with the demands of the Lenten season. And others.

Choices: A Novel by Paul Wolfe (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2006; ISBN 0-86534-485-X) (telephone: 800/243-5644 for orders).
During several conversations with the author of Choices, he described his forthcoming book as “Jane Austen with sex,” and this entertainingly wicked publication delivers on this promise. Wolfe’s story is set in Italy, primarily at the international music festival of “Lospello,” where devoted manager Ricardo Ricci keeps things on an even keel. Keeping a relationship with his longtime companion and love Katherine presents the other major challenge of Ricardo’s life. Adding George, a young and comely narcissist, to the festival’s management staff stirs the erotic mix to boiling, and beyond. Sly commentaries on the music festival scene vie with various steamy couplings to keep readers turning the pages. A harpsichordist, the fresh toy for the festival’s maestro Gianfranco Connery, makes a timely appearance [page 368]. Recommended for mature readers only.
Paul Wolfe, Texas born, studied harpsichord with Wanda Landowska together with compadre Rafael Puyana from 1955 until Madame’s death in 1959. During these years he recorded a number of solo harpsichord discs for the Experiences Anonymes label. A few years later, upon the closing of the recording company, these tapes were purchased by Lyrichord Records. Wolfe’s discs, offering splendid playing on an early, pre-Landowska-model Pleyel harpsichord and on his Rutkowski and Robinette nine-foot instrument with sub-unison stop, have been reissued by Lyrichord in two compact disc albums entitled When They Had Pedals, comprising works by Frescobaldi along with English keyboard music from the Tudor Age to the Restoration [LEMS-8033] and six Handel Suites (numbers 3, 8, 11, 13, 14, and 15) [LEMS-8034].

By the legendary Landowska herself, two recordings from her American years have been combined in one compact disc for the Testament label (SBT 1380): Wanda Landowska: Dances of Poland and A Treasury of Harpsichord Music. Originally entitledLandowska Plays for Paderewski (the noted pianist was, late in life, prime minister of Poland), Landowska’s program includes a wide-ranging variety of unusual pieces: short works by Michal Kleofas Oginski, Jacob le Polonais, Diomedes Cato, Landowska herself, and the iconic national composer Fryderyk Chopin (Mazurka in C, opus 56, number 2). If there were ever any doubt about the harpsichordist’s Polish roots, her magisterial rhythmic control in these essential ethnic offerings would squelch any possible argument to the contrary.
Not the least part of the enjoyment provided by this compilation comes from new and original comments in an essay by British harpsichordist Jane Clark. She presents a fresh perspective on two selections by Rameau (Air grave pour les deux Polonois) and François Couperin (Air dans le goût Polonois), noting that the 18th-century French did not think highly of their neighbor nation’s chivalric etiquette, thus suggesting that these short pieces might be satirical rather than adulatory.
The second program on this disc was issued originally in 1957 as a collection of short works recorded at various venues during the year 1946. Highlights include Couperin’s Les Barricades Mistérieuses and L’Arlequine, Handel’s “Harmonious Blacksmith” Variations from the Great Suite in E Major, two welcome Mozart miniatures, plus the longer Rondo in D, K. 485 (splendid reminders of Landowska’s lovely way with the Salzburg master, more often played by her on the piano than the harpsichord), and ending with a signature performance of Bach’s Vivaldi arrangement (Concerto in D, BWV 972), at the end of which, loathe to depart, she iterates again and again, in descending registers, the third movement’s signature motive—an idiosyncratic and unforgettable addition to Bach’s transcription.

Viewing Landowska: Uncommon Visionary, a 57-minute documentary by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Diane Pontius first issued on video tape in 1997, should be required of all who prize the harpsichord revival. Now available in DVD format (VAI DVD 4246), the new issue has more than 50 minutes of additional material, including all the extant footage of Landowska playing the harpsichord, and an audio-only reissue of her November 1933 first recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (made in Paris). The reminiscences from several now-departed major figures who knew Landowska intimately—especially her longtime companion Denise Restout; friend, Polish singer Doda Conrad; and recording engineer John Pfeiffer—are irreplaceable and especially illuminating as the great 20th-century harpsichordist’s life recedes ever further into history. It is delightful, as well, to see some younger images of other commentators in the documentary—Alice Cash, Skip Sempé, Willard Martin, and, yes, this writer—as we appeared and sounded in the waning years of the past millennium. But the major impact of this video disc stems from Landowska’s inimitable playing, reminding us again and again why she became (and, for many, remains) the preferred exponent of that strange and wonderful instrument she toiled so assiduously to revive, THE HARPSICHORD.

Send news items or comments about Harpsichord News to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275; .

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Remembering Wm. Neil Roberts
(1929–2011)
Contemplating an invitation to play a harpsichord recital in California and not knowing where to find a suitable instrument, I turned to Gustav Leonhardt for some advice. His response, “You can’t go wrong with an instrument by William Neil Roberts and Anthony Brazier,” led me to that Los Angeles team of harpsichord builders and early music promoters. Diary entries show that my initial query to Roberts and Brazier resulted in their delivering a very fine small Flemish double harpsichord for the 1981 recital at Chapman College, south of the city, as well as an invitation to play the March 8 and 9, 1980 solo recitals for their Harpsichord Center series in Los Angeles.
Thus began an association that resulted in my inviting the more-experienced Neil to help with planning and to share teaching assignments for the first Southern Methodist University Harpsichord Workshop at the school’s New Mexico campus, the Fort Burgwin Research Center near Taos. In August 1988 Neil and Tony drove cross-country from the Pacific Coast to “the land of enchantment,” transporting not only two of their instruments to complement the ones being brought from Dallas, but also, in a bit of luck, serving as emergency transportation for Neil’s student Ed Petron, a participant in that and each subsequent workshop, whose aging Volkswagen had given up the ghost outside Albuquerque as he drove eastward, fortuitously noticed by Tony as the Harpsichord Center van nearly sped by the stranded motorist.
The instruments were, indeed, superb. So was the teaching. I particularly recall Neil’s inspired connection of the term “fringing” (a non-simultaneity of bass and upper chord notes) with a possible Anglicization of the word “frenching,” as indeed this technique for softening certain textures at the harpsichord is a particularly French one. After the lengthy closing recital given by students, Neil shared some memories of similar workshop recitals past, including the daunting recall of an already very long California program that morphed into a marathon when the final player decided she wanted to play the entire Goldberg Variations—with repeats! Both from experience and this anecdote we learned to put strict time limits in place for such closing events!
Invited back for the next summer offering at Fort Burgwin, Neil was sidelined by an attack of kidney stones only days before the event, but hoped to be able to travel. It was not to be: an early morning call from Tony on day one of the summer program relayed the bad news that they would be unable to make the trip. I was fortunate to find Susan Ferré as an immediate replacement, but with the largest enrollment of all the seventeen workshops, and only the two harpsichords that we had brought from Dallas, this extremely wet week proved a challenge for all of us. The Roberts-Brazier duo was sorely missed.
Neil and Tony did have one subsequent summer outing at the Fort during the first segment of a two-week workshop scheduled in July 1990. I did not observe Neil’s insightful interaction with the small group of students, since he had made it clear that he did not want me to attend his classes, but I remember the sensitive French works on a duo flute and harpsichord recital with Tony as the highlight of the week’s faculty concert offerings. I had assumed that most of the students would find the opportunity—to learn both from Neil’s teaching and from a second week in which Susan Ferré would coach them in continuo playing with her Texas Baroque Ensemble artists—an irresistible package deal. But, in reality, half of the class enrolled in either one or the other week, meaning that our expenses doubled while our tuition income basically halved, and we closed the books deeply “in the red.” A double session was not offered again.
The national convention of the American Guild of Organists was held in Los Angeles in summer 2004. It served as a focal point around which to organize pre- and post-meeting stays with Neil and Tony, memorable both for the vocal interjections of Gus, their parrot, and for the opportunity to observe Neil’s new interest in non-harpsichord-related painting. During our visit Neil was frequently to be found in the studio, working on his evocative watercolors. We departed Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport that July with new purchases for the Palmer-Putman art collection: the framed sketch of a friend relaxing with his three dachshunds, and a limited edition signed photograph of Neil’s Portrait of Dr. Bell, violinist Joshua Bell’s psychologist father Alan, a work that continues to elicit strong reactions from those who see it. If the eyes truly are the gateway to the soul, Neil’s concentration on the upper part of Dr. Bell’s face is certainly apt, striking, and unexpected. The unique 2002 painting belongs to Los Angeles collectors Kay and Jack Lachter; thus, the rest of us, including Dr. Bell’s family, must remain satisfied with a print edition of ten numbered examples.
Neil was born in Iowa on June 2, 1929. He succumbed to lymphoma in Los Angeles on April 7, 2011. Concerts had taken him to central Europe, Taiwan, Tahiti, Mexico, and the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, in addition to the continental United States. Memorable career moments included frequent appearances on American Public Media, especially those on Bill McLaughlin’s “Saint Paul Sunday.”
Roberts’ musical growth was influenced by harpsichordists Alice Ehlers, Ralph Kirkpatrick, Gustav Leonhardt, and the many artists sponsored by the Southern California Baroque Association, of which he was president. His solo harpsichord recordings covered a wide range of composers and styles: Byrd to Bach, Scott Joplin rags (“even before they were discovered by E. Power Biggs,” Neil pointed out), and his beloved French repertoire, including period transcriptions from Lully and other solo keyboard works by D’Anglebert, played stylishly on two then-recent Roberts & Brazier instruments for a 1981 Nonesuch disc. Obviously, it is extremely rare for a professional player to build his own harpsichord. (I can recall only the young Tom Pixton doing a similar thing.)
Penning a laconic dedication on my complimentary copy of that long-playing record, Neil wrote, “I’d better get a good review!”
Accomplished, dear friend!
Finally, to complete an arch form of associations, my May 2011 harpsichord recital in Santa Rosa, California, was played on the 1988 Franco-Flemish double instrument belonging to Concert Artist Cooperative founder and director Beth Zucchino. It seemed appropriate to add one of the most intensely moving commemorative pieces from the 17th-century solo repertoire to this program, Louis Couperin’s ineffably beautiful F-major Tombeau de Mr. Blancrocher, as my way of remembering Wm. Neil Roberts.
Among Neil’s gifted students, two outstanding ones, now professionally active in the San Francisco Bay Area, are Gilbert Martinez (attracted to that first Fort Burgwin Workshop through Neil’s influence) and Katherine Roberts Perl (who continues Neil’s rare combination of distinguished harpsichord performance and skillful technical expertise in the maintenance of the instrument), both of whom have contributed to this memoir. Further information was offered by David Calhoun of Seattle; Elaine Funaro, through the Aliénor Newsletter for Spring 2011, viewable at www.harpsichord-now.org; and by Neil’s business and life partner, Anthony Brazier, who survives him. 

Comments and news items are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275. E-mails to [email protected].

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

SEHKS 2006

Perhaps not all roads, but sufficient ones led to Rome (Georgia), where the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society held its 26th annual gathering at Shorter College March 8–10. Focused on the keyboard music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the group also celebrated all twelve of its presidents, each of whom participated in the program.

Several spoke (Shannon on the barrel organ, Jacob on SEHKS’ history); others played Shorter’s elegantly voiced mid-20th-century Walter Holtkamp Sr. organ (Butler, Brock, and Lohuis, with violinist Robert Murray); harpsichord (Funaro); or fortepiano (Louwenaar, whose Mozart Rondo in A minor tugged at the heart, and Willis, soloist in Mozart’s insouciant Concerto in F, K. 459, with the fledgling Atlanta Baroque Orchestra under John Hsu). Those who both spoke and played included host DeWitt (muselaar), Johnson (organ), Palmer (harpsichord), and Lucktenberg (demonstrating bits of the same Mozart works on harpsichord, fortepiano, and his 1942 Steinway grand piano).

A signed, limited edition print of Jane Johnson’s witty caricature was presented to each president at the Society’s business luncheon.

Seasoned SEHKS presenters included mini-recitalists Judith Conrad (clavichord), Elaine Dykstra (organ), Gail Olszewski (fortepiano), and Iberian music specialist Linton Powell. New to these programs were Luis Sanchez, Marie-Louise Catsalis, and Robert Holm. Youthful vigor marked Michael Tsalka’s fortepiano program and that of the Canadian duo Ian Robertson and Sara-Anne Churchill, who gave a scintillating and sensitive reading of Mozart’s Sonata in D for two claviers, K. 448, using fortepiano and harpsichord.

In a featured Friday evening concert at nearby Reinhardt College, inimitable and amiable jazz harpsichordist Don Angle, possessor of one of the world’s finest harpsichord techniques, showed it to musical advantage in the warm acoustical bloom of the new Falany Center’s concert hall.

Send news items or comments about Harpsichord News to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275;
.

Robert Tifft is Evening Circulation Supervisor for the Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University. His 28-year friendship with János Sebestyén arose from lifelong passions for the harpsichord and record collecting. In 2000 he created the János Sebestyén webpage at www.jsebestyen.org.

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON

János Sebestyén (1931-2012)

by Robert Tifft

There were many sides to János Sebestyén. Few people, even among his friends, knew them all or were aware of his many accomplishments. To record collectors he was an enigmatic figure whose name appeared on often-obscure recordings. In Hungary, concert audiences knew him from decades of performances on harpsichord and organ. For others he was a familiar presence on radio and television. His students often knew him only as their professor. I was privileged to experience first-hand his work in all these areas. 

János Sebestyén was born in Budapest on March 2, 1931. Both parents were musicians—his father Sándor a cellist and mother Rózsi a pianist. His musical education began with his mother and continued at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, where he studied organ, piano, and composition. He graduated with an organ diploma in 1955, a student of János Hammerschlag and Ferenc Gergely. His association with the harpsichord came about purely by chance. In 1957 he was asked to play the instrument for a performance of Frank Martin’s Petite Symphonie Concertante. The harpsichord was unfamiliar to many in Hungary and this performance awakened an interest with both the public and a number of composers. Sebestyén soon established himself as the only concertizing harpsichordist in Hungary.

At the same time he worked at the Hungarian Radio. His career there began in 1950 and by 1962 he was writing and hosting his own programs. These broadcasts continued for 45 years and dealt not only with music, but also politics and history. He was a true reporter, never without camera and tape recorder. His most famous program, The Diary of a Radio Reporter, was a monthly broadcast that documented in sound the cultural and political events that had taken place fifty years previous to the air date. The radio was his lifelong passion.

Sebestyén’s performing career outside Hungary began in 1958 with a tour of Scandinavia. Russia followed in 1961, then Holland the following year. A tour of Italy in 1963 was pivotal in many respects and this country would become his second home. It was in Rome that he first met composer Miklós Rózsa, resulting in a lifelong friendship. In Milan he was reunited with former Hungarian Radio colleague Thomas Gallia, a sound engineer now working as studio director at the Angelicum, an important cultural center with a permanent orchestra and recording studio. 

Sebestyén’s discography may be divided into two parts: the recordings made in Hungary, and those in Italy. Most of the recordings in Hungary were for the state label Hungaroton, while those in Italy were published by a number of labels in Europe and the United States. His association with Vox in New York came about after Gallia and Rózsa suggested him to George Mendelssohn, owner of the label. Mendelssohn, famous for his frugality, provided little money and expected his artists to work quickly. Sebestyén was rarely happy with the results; the recordings in Italy were rushed and the instruments he played were far from ideal. He said these recordings pursued him like phantoms, disappearing from one label, only to be resurrected on another. Some remained available for decades. 

It was his collaboration with violinist Dénes Kovács for a 1970 recording of Corelli’s sonatas that led to the establishment of the harpsichord department at the Academy of Music. Kovács, then rector of the Academy, charged Sebestyén with the task of leading the department. While Sebestyén was never part of the early music movement, he provided every opportunity to expose his students to the newly emerging historical approach to the harpsichord, inviting prominent harpsichordists from throughout Europe for concerts and workshops. He encouraged his students to explore works outside the standard harpsichord repertoire and insisted they play new music. He wanted them to be as flexible as possible—to feel comfortable also at the piano or organ, and thus not limit themselves. He never considered himself a specialist, relying instead on his musical instincts to navigate the entire keyboard repertoire.

Sebestyén’s personal life was as passionate and varied as his professional activities. His circle of friends included actors, artists, pilots, doctors, and diplomats. It is no exaggeration to say that visitors flocked to his home, seeking knowledge and advice, or simply to enjoy his dark yet playful sense of humor. No one in Budapest was as well-connected—he knew everyone and had the ability to get things done. His accomplishments were many and there is no doubt he secured for the harpsichord a permanent place in Hungarian musical life and achieved near-legendary status at the Hungarian Radio. He was loved by his students, friends, and colleagues, and for me, our friendship was both unexpected and rewarding. János Sebestyén died in Budapest on February 4, 2012.

News items and comments for these pages are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275. E-mail:

[email protected]

.

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Chris DeBlasio: Dances for
Clavichord
I have been thinking about art and loss in the time of AIDS this winter, especially since my fellow Oberlin Conservatory student and friend Calvin Hampton’s 70th birth anniversary occurred on the final day of 2008. Calvin’s younger colleague, the New York-based composer Chris DeBlasio, would have reached the age of fifty on February 22, 2009, had his life, too, not been cut short in 1993 by AIDS-related illness. The recent publication of this set of five short pieces for clavichord (suitable for the harpsichord, as well) by Wayne Leupold Editions (WL610010) represents a worthy calling card for a lamentably short-lived composer.
It joins the poignant and moving God Is Our Righteousness for guitar and organ and a Serenade for violin and organ as DeBlasio’s published instrumental legacy, and is the only solo keyboard work, thus far. In her comprehensive catalog of 20th-century works for harpsichord and clavichord, Frances Bedford noted two separate sets of pieces: Three Dances (1986) and [Five] Dances (1988), each first performed by Andrew deMasi. When I contacted DeBlasio’s estate executor Harry Huff to ask whether these were all the same pieces, he responded:
. . . I’m quite certain that the set of five that Wayne [Leupold] has published is complete. I suspect that Chris simply added two dances in 1988 to the three already premiered in 1986.
I recommend all of these attractive dances, although I am most excited by number one [Vivo]—an exhilarating study of alternating right and left hand triads presented in rapidly changing asymmetric meters (4/8, 5/8, 3/8, 2/8); number two [Moderato Assai]—a lyrical three-page aria; and the energetic concluding fifth [Allegro Vivace], with its propelling rhythm and frequent hemiolas. These three movements are all appropriately textured to sound well on early keyboard instruments.
The middle two pieces [Andantino and Adagio] seem slightly less satisfying to my hands and ears. Without access to a manuscript source I am unable to determine whether these might be the added pieces. Nor am I able to confirm the lack of several accidentals that seem to be missing, but I suggest that surely the soprano D in the last measure of page 5 should be a D-sharp mimicking the previous statement of the figure four measures earlier; and I suspect that the soprano A in the last measure of page 8 should similarly be an A-sharp, in keeping with the following statement of the same motive, which includes repeated G-sharps.
John Corigliano, one of DeBlasio’s teachers at the Manhattan School of Music, mourned his former student as “a composer who embodied that rarest of all things—a truly original lyric voice.” Acquire these lovely pieces, play them, and do your part to keep alive the legacy of a talented composer whose distinctive music deserves to be heard.
For those of our readers not averse to gritty and graphic words about sexuality or illness, the book Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2001) provides 22 essays edited by Edmund White, produced in cooperation with the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS. Poet Maya Angelou contributed a short appreciation of this project, and William Berger, currently a producer of the Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts, provided an illuminating, caring chronicle of DeBlasio’s final years (pages 153–167).
[Also worthy of further exploration, Calvin Hampton’s organ and choral works are published by Wayne Leupold Editions.]

Short listings of recent harpsichord recordings (and a score)

Antonio Soler Sonatas. Kathleen McIntosh plays her 1994 John Phillips harpsichord after Dumont (1707).
Recorded at Maricam Studio, Santa Fe, New Mexico (2007). A large helping of Soler played with panache by Ms. McIntosh, and available from her at
<[email protected]>.

Soler and Scarlatti in London: A Selection of Blended Sonatas. Luisa Morales plays a harpsichord by Joseph Kirckman (1798). FIMTE, Apdo.212 Garrucha, 04630 Almeria, Spain, <www.fimte.org&gt;.
Recorded on a splendid harpsichord from the collection of the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota, with sound realistically captured by recording engineer Peter Nothnagle. Thrilling explorations of sixteen Iberian sonatas played on a large English instrument similar to several that were exported to Spain in the late 18th century. A must-have disc!

Le Clavecin Français: Music from the Borel Manuscript. Davitt Moroney plays the original Nicholas Dumont harpsichord (1707) and a Joannes Ruckers instrument (Antwerp, 1635) from the collection of Karen Flint. Plectra Music PL20801 (2 CDs), <www.plectra.org&gt;.
A splendid opportunity to compare the sound of Phillips’s harpsichord with its original inspiration. Music by d’Anglebert, Thomelin, La Barre, Brochard, la Comtesse de Bieule, Louis Couperin, Chambonnières, Dumont, Bouat, La Pierre, Vincent, De Lorency, Richard, and Rossi from a mid-17th century manuscript now in the University of California, Berkeley Hargrove Music Library.

Jean-Baptiste Lully: Divertissements. David Chung plays a 2001 harpsichord by Bruce Kennedy (after Michael Mietke, Berlin, ca. 1704). Musique sans frontiers MSF 73967, <[email protected]>.
Twenty-three keyboard transcriptions from the Lully operas Atys, Isis, Phaéton, and Armide. A one-man musical entrepreneur, Dr. Chung has also edited the scores, available in: Jean-Baptiste Lully: 27 Opera Pieces transcribed for Keyboard in the 17th and 18th Century. Ut Orpheus Edizioni (Bologna), 2004, <www.utorpheus.com&gt;.

Comments or news items for these pages are always welcome. Please address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275; <[email protected]>.