Couperin, 45 Selected Pieces for Piano (2 CD set)

Ray McIntyre's biography has appeared in various editions of American Keyboard Artists (Chicago) and International Who's Who in Music (Cambridge, England). He served as director of the Music and Art Center, Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont, from 1960-1970. From 1970-1972, Mr. McIntyre lectured on Music History at the Institute of European Studies in Vienna, Austria and was a Professor of Piano at the Konservatorium der Stadt Wien (Vienna) from 1972 until 1983. During this time, he pursued his passionate interest in research on historical performance practice by availing himself of the rich musical resources available to him. In 1983 he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area where he lives with his family and teaches piano and harpsichord. He is a frequent adjudicator and lecturer-recitalist on historical performance for various organisations, including the National Convention of the Music Teachers National Association, Wichita, Kansas, 1989, and was awarded a Master Teacher Certificate by that organisation in 1993. As a harpsichordist, McIntyre rates with the best in the land," said the Detroit Free Press in 1956. In 1968, the New York Times wrote of him, "McIntyre's forceful playing...showed a fine ability to accumulate the special austere kind of grandness of sonority and line the harpsichord is capable of...a serious musician with intelligent, individual ideas." Well informed on historical performance practice, and with his extensive background as a concert harpsichordist, Mr. McIntyre brings to life the harpsichord pieces of Couperin on the piano (and harpsichord) by demonstrating that with an understanding of the style elements, touch, articulation, note inequality, treatment of silence and an understanding of ornamentation, the harpsichord pieces of Couperin become universal keyboard works.