The Purcell Quartet responds naturally to the rhetoric of the music, particularly in the way they grow towards and relish Couperin’s expressive dissonances

These are attractive works whose idiom nonetheless often eludes convincing performance. Couperin was a stickler for detail and was meticulous in matters of ornamentation. The Purcell Quartet have taken trouble over this and the results are rewarding.

Indeed, these are lovely readings, the Purcell Quartet’s elegant restraint perfectly suited to Couperin’s civilized musical language. Each movement is cleanly sculpted, the sinuous lines of the slower material (even when disrupted by profuse ornamentation as in the Sarabandes) contrasted with the sharply defined articulation of faster passages and Woolley’s sonorous utterances. You’re not looking at a sculpture; your not even running your hands over its smooth surfaces; you’re witnessing the shape unfolding in time. This is unexpectedly powerful: listen to the fugal textures of the second ‘Vivement’ of ‘L’Imperiale’ or the ‘Chaconne’ from the same ‘ordre’… Jonathan Copper’s sound recording is intimate and detailed and Richard Langham Smith’s booklet notes are a pleasure to read. And if that’s not enough, you get a marvellous Poussin on the front cover!