Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer may not have been a great composer, but he was an important one, not least because his Ariadne musica–20 preludes and fugues in most of the available keys–clearly inspired Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Fischer’s Musical Parnassus consists of nine suites of harpsichord music more or less in the French style (as he understood it), each named for one of the muses, though without any descriptive intent in this regard. This first disc contains the first six suites, and in case you’ve ever wondered how certain French record labels (Calliope and Erato, to be specific) got their names, now you know. The music itself is charming, highly varied in tempo and rhythm, and easily digestible–most of the various dance movements are less than two minutes long. Luc Beauséjour plays with both delicacy and verve, all the more effective due to the attractive sound of his instrument, which is captured in a recording that gives the music an appealing brightness without clangor or excessive mechanical noise from harpsichord’s keyboard action. A charmer.
