Jossé (Charles Joseph) Boutmy (1697-1779) is best described as the Belgian Louis-Claude Daquin. Like his Parisian contemporary, Boutmy was equally gifted as harpsichordist and organist, a performer popular with royalty and the nobility, and the composer of tuneful and idiomatic pieces that lie gratefully under the fingers and deliberately demand little of the listener’s intellect. Therefore, like Daquin’s, Boutmy’s compositions - He published three Livres de pièces de clavecin between 1738 and 1750. - are usually dismissed as second rate and shallow by the scholars and the other self-styled arbiters of quality.

As Mario Raskin demonstrates through his exhilarating, sensitive, and vibrant performances, recorded on a Ruckers style harpsichord built by Marc Ducornet and Emannuel Danset in 2001, that derogatory assessment is both unfair and inaccurate. Like Daquin’s, Boutmy’s keyboard pieces succeed admirably in doing what they set out to do. They entertain, they stir the soul, they cause the toe to tap, and they make the pulse quicken. They are evocative and onomatopoetic; they are not "profound" and deliberately so.

Raskin gives us all of the Première suite and three movements, subtitled petite fête guerrière, from the Deuxième suite. TERI NOEL TOWE