The French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau releases his new album on Erato — Warner Classics. Melancholy Grace is a poetic collection of keyboard music from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by European composers including Frescobaldi, Luigi Rossi, Picchi, Luzzaschi, Sweelinck, Dowland, Bull and Gibbons.
Jean Rondeau has conceived the album as a sombre, but eloquent dialogue between two contrasting voices: melancholy conveyed through chromaticism and melancholy conveyed through the musical expression of tears and weeping. Each voice finds expression through a different instrument: an Italian virginal harpsichord from 1527, one of the first harpsichords ever made and a modern replica of an 18th century harpsichord for the ‘chromatic’ pieces.
