The producers of the record label Aside, have announced Sunday, December 30, the death of the harpsichordist Blandine Verlet, at the age of 76 years, commenting on the Twitter account of label their “immense sadness” and “the great honor” of having produced the last recordings of this great lady of music.

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Born in Paris in 1942, Blandine Verlet was the daughter of Pierre Verlet, curator at the Louvre and specialist of the history of furniture in France. In 1963, while studying at the national Conservatory of Paris (CNSM), she won the first prize of harpsichord at the unanimously. In the same year, it shines at the Munich international competition (ARD), winning the special jury prize, the same year that the trumpeter of genius Maurice André won first prize. In 1968 and 1969, she worked in the United States, at Yale university, with the great musicologist and harpsichordist american Ralph Kirkpatrick.

The directory of Blandine Verlet embraces the full spectrum of the literature for harpsichord, works by English composers of the Sixteenth century to contemporary compositions such as those of György Ligeti. It focuses its work on the baroque, the golden age of the instrument, and serious, Johann Jakob Froberger, Scarlatti, Bach, and Rameau. We will remember his extensive discography of his outstanding complete works of François Couperin, “the companion of a lifetime”, as well as Blandine Verlet told herself.

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In parallel to his career as a concert performer, Blandine Verlet pursues an intense activity as a teacher. She teaches at the Conservatoire Claude Debussy in Paris, from 1983 to 1985, at the Conservatoire Gabriel Fauré in Angoulême, from 1985 to 1987 and at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Bordeaux from 1987 to 1990. Jean Rondeau, crowned in 2015 “Revelation soliste instrumental of the year” at the Victoires de la musique classique was one of his followers. Until 2007, Blandine Verlet taught in the famous Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Rueil-Malmaison as well as at the municipal Conservatoire paris Jean-Philippe Rameau.

In January 2018, Blandine Verlet has published a disc in an Aside, in which she came back for the last time to his first love: parts of the third book of François Couperin. An album that had made the joy of music critics.

Marc Voinchet, director of France Musique, recalled the “huge sadness for the lovers of the harpsichord” that represents the disappearance of Blandine Verlet. On social networks, his students or his friends have paid tribute to “the illustrious interpreter of Couperin”, his “great singularity” and its “freedom”.

Portrait of Blandine Verlet by his label Private Music Blandine Verlet interprets The Barricades Mystérieuses , 6th order, 2nd book, of François Couperin