The oddly named was highly regarded by composers of his own time but is all but forgotten in ours; this release by harpsichordist is one of the few to take it up since it was championed by composer years ago. The neglect is surely due in part to a more general failure to investigate the work of Irish composers ( was born in Winchester but spent most of his life in Dublin) and in part to the fact that his music is tough to classify and doesn't fit the usual narratives. After apparently flunking out of Trinity College in Dublin, he was sent to Italy to study music and met . He was so depressed by 's superior talent that he refused to play the harpsichord for a month, but he ended up as a champion of 's music, performing it and editing a volume of it in sheet music form. The influence is easily audible in the confidently named toward the end of the program and the exercises that edited that follows. The eight harpsichord suites are something else again. They are French-style dance suites with bold harmonic move, looking back to the suites of and even his older contemporaries. does well at capturing the surprise of these and of shifting into the more brilliant Scarlattian style where it occurs. Everything is highly listenable, and Baroque buffs who have never heard of will experience this as a real find. ~ James Manheim