Blandine Verlet
Harpsichordist celebrated for her interpretations of Couperin
BLANDINE VERLET, who has died aged 76, was a leading French harpsichord player and teacher, renowned for her sensitive and imaginative interpretations of music by François Couperin, the 17th-century Baroque composer, and her sense of poetry in Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
The French magazine Diapason described her 1993 recording of the latter with admiration, saying: “Verlet did not go on stage presenting herself solemnly in a sacred mood … She would open the door for us to her apartment and make her beloved harpsichord sing madly.”
Blandine Verlet had a freer, some said more exaggerated, approach to the music than many of her contemporaries, a style that brought her both admirers and detractors. She also had a vivid way of describing music, once declaring that Bach’s Inventions “have a smell of brioche”.
Blandine Verlet was born in Paris on February 27 1942, the seventh of 10 children, most of whom played piano, cello or violin. “I made music so that I could have some peace,” she later said of growing up in a large family. Her mother Nicole (née Réaubourg) was a goldsmith and her father, Pierre, was chief curator of objets d’art at the Louvre whom she would accompany on overseas visits, sometimes giving recitals to complement his lectures.
As a child Blandine Verlet was fascinated by her brothers’ records of Wanda Landowska, the Polishfrench harpsichordist who played a large role in reviving the instrument’s popularity. Aged nine she was taken to her first recital, given by Marcelle de Lacour, and determined to learn the instrument. “I was so lazy that my parents couldn’t believe it,” she told Gramophone in 1976, although she later admitted that she had also been attracted by Lacour’s glamorous dress.
Despite difficulties finding both an instrument and a teacher, in 1957 she enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire. She won a conservatoire prize in 1963, which opened the door to a concert career in France and Italy.
Her studies took her to Yale in the US, where she worked with Ralph Kirkpatrick, although she recalled his dislike of teaching. Asked if that meant she had learnt the instrument alone, Blandine Verlet replied: “It would be pretentious to say it, but yes, more or less,” quickly adding: “with Bach”. While at Yale she worked in a language laboratory, becoming familiar with the tape-editing techniques that she used to edit her own disc of Scarlatti sonatas for Philips in 1976.
Blandine Verlet gave a couple of concerts in London in 1977 and 1978, but her career was largely in the francophone world, including appearances in Morocco. Her recorded legacy proved popular with British reviewers, however, who particularly praised her Couperin discs. Meanwhile, she became a sought-after teacher of French harpsichord interpretation.
On the cover of her final recording, in which she returned to Couperin, she was photographed from behind, walking through a French field, her hair as tousled as the clouds in the sky above her. Instead of the usual dry biography and notes about the music, she wrote an affectionate essay about her love for the composer and his music, including a poem in celebration of him.
In her early days as a performer, Blandine Verlet would sometimes encounter poorly maintained or prepared instruments. “But it’s like being a jockey on a bad horse,” she explained, waving her hands in Gallic fashion. “You still have to race as well as you can.”
Blandine Verlet, born February 27 1942, died December 30 2018