iS FRANCIS POULENC CONCERTO IN D MINOR FOR TWO PIANOS AND ORCHESTRA

Francis Poulenc and Jacques Février, pianists Allegro ma non troppo / Larghetto / Finale

CONCERT CHAMPETRE FOR HARPSICHORD AND ORCHESTRA

-Aimée van de Wiele, harpsichordist Allegro molto / Andante / Finale

Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (Paris) conducted by GEORGES PRETRE No one could resist the contagious joyousness, the grace and the exuberance of these two works; but the performances are something special too. The harpsichord concerto was written for Landowska; Aimée van de Wiele is a worthy suc- cessor. The other was first performed in 1932 by these two old teammates Poulenc and Février; they are still, after thirty years, the most youthful interpreters imaginable. Excellent

recording ...

CANDIDE (PARIS)

Berore HE BECAME A COMPOSER, the young Francis Poulenc was a pianist. His mother, an excellent musician, was his first teacher; sub- sequently he studied with a niece of César Franck and later the great Ricardo Vifies, to whom Poulenc has said that he owes “everything.” From Vifies he learned certain pianistic “secrets” and a particularly sensuous touch. After reaching maturity as a composer, Poulenc is still a pianist, and has concertized widely with baritone Pierre Bernac; in 1957 he won a Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles Cros for his recording of pieces by Eric Satie. It is only natural that Poulenc should entrust to the keyboard sev- eral of his major compositions. Aside from chamber music and solo piano works (the Mouvements perpétuels are only the most famous), Poulenc has composed five concertos: the two recorded here, the dance con- certo Aubade (1929), the Concerto for Organ (with string orchestra and timpani) (1941) and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1950). The two concertos in this album belong to the composer’s “elegant” period—the Concert Champétre (Rustic Concert) for harpsichord and small orchestra in particular. Com- posed in 1927-28, it is the first work

of Poulenc that is truly symphonic in construction. It stems from his friendship with the late Wanda Landowska, who was then living at Saint-Leu, France. Every Sunday in the spring, in a small studio built at the back of her garden and sur- rounded by cherry and peach trees, she gave recitals that will never be forgotten by those lucky enough to hear them.

Poulenc met Landowska while she was rehearsing the harpsichord part for the first production of Falla’s El Retablo de Maese Pedro in the home of the Princess Edmond de Polignac. (Ricardo Vifies was help- ing work the marionettes for which this miniature opera is written.) One day Landowska said to Poulenc, “Write me a concerto!” The com- poser began at once, still intimidated by the great artist and not yet really familiar with the harpsichord. He soon perceived the unique qualities, the immense resources of the instru- ment, which was then even more neglected than now. Although he later authorized a piano version of the score, he insists that this is strictly a compromise, for it quite alters the music’s character.

The composer has explained the title as follows; “For a young man who, until he was eighteen, knew

nothing of the ‘country’ but the Bois de Vincennes and the hills of Champigny, ‘rural’ means the outer suburbs. Landowska lived in Saint- Leu, not far from Ermenonville, and my work is set in a very definite atmosphere of the eighteenth cen- tury. This is the ‘country’ of Diderot and Rousseau...This explains the refined character of some of my me- lodic material. When he wrote about the piece, the critic Gabriel Marcel believed that he found in the finale shocking and inexplicable ‘barracks noises.’ Quite so. For me, a con- firmed city-dweller, the bugles from the Fort de Vincennes, heard from the nearby woods, are as poetic as hunting horns in a vast forest were for Weber.”

The Concert Champétre was given its first public performance in the Salle Pleyel, May 3, 1929, with Landowska at the harpsichord and the Orches- tre Symphonique de Paris conducted by Pierre Monteux. Several days before, however, a private perform- ance had been given at Landowska’s house in Saint-Leu, the composer himself playing the orchestral score on the piano. In L’écrivain public Jacques de Lacretelle recalled this poetic moment: “Just imagine the setting of this performance. A coun- try house transformed by Mme. Landowska’s rare instruments into a musical museum; all around the art- ists, young girls who—enveloped by the frailest, most tender sounds— seem touched with an especial grace. Poulenc is at the piano playing the orchestral part. His playing is nim- ble, spirited, brilliant. He is quite sure of himself; nourished on every- thing new and lively that music has produced over the last twenty-five years, he demonstrates his own new- ness and liveliness. And the alliance he has formed with the instrument of Rameau and Couperin clearly marks his position. Baroque style and the surprises of modern har- mony are volatilized in the sounds of the harpsichord. He waits for Landowska...he calls to her...he allows himself to be subdued by her. There is a fairy-like quality in their collaboration; this is something out of A Midsummer Night's Dream... Beauty and the Beast...’

The work is in three movements. The first is introduced by several slow and solemn measures whose forbidding, haughty character rather reminds us of Stravinsky’s strong contemporary influence on French musicians. The Allegro molto proper is in pure 18th Century style, and unfolds in the joyous and imperti- nent mood that characterizes Poulenc’s style in this period. The

Library of Congress Catalog Card Numbers R 62-1486 (mono) and R 62-1487 (stereo) apply to this recording.

second movement, Tempo de sicil- iene, is one of great tenderness, probably one of Poulenc’s most suc- cessful creations melodically and harmonically. The Finale, Presto (trés gai), is a charming meeting be- tween the glib agility of Handel and the harmonic and rhythmic rough- ness of Stravinsky; yet Poulenc is clearly in control of the piece from start to finish.

* * *

In the Concerto for Two Pianos Poulenc took a new step forward in his evolution. It too is Baroque to a certain extent, but it goes beyond Baroque conventions. It is free— completely free—and free in spite of the rather precise models which Poulenc set before himself: the two- piano concerto, of which Bach, Mozart and Mendelssohn had con- tributed just about the only exam- ples in the history of music. More- over he elected to follow their spirit of the brilliant divertissement.

The Concerto for Two Pianos is also connected with the memory of that patroness of the arts the Prin- cess Edmond de Polignac. It was she who commissioned the work from Poulenc in order to have him play it at the International Festival of Con- temporary Music at Venice in 1932. It was there that the work was first performed, with Jacques Février at the second piano. “Having always played two-piano music with my old boyhood friend Jacques Février,” says Poulenc, “I must immodestly testify that the first performance was

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flawless. Désiré Defauw, the Belgian conductor, directed the orchestra of La Scala. It was a smash success, for the piece is gay and uncomplicated.”

It is surely gay and uncompli- cated, and remains one of Poulenc’s most typically inventive, spontane- ous and free compositions. As in most of his works during this period, the influence of Stravinsky is still perceptible, but Poulenc’s personal- ity triumphs, as usual, over all clichés and allusions.

The Concerto for Two Pianos is in three movements corresponding to the classical plan. The opening Allegro is marked by an irresistible, buoyant energy, with a slightly acid charm. Here his sonic preoccupa- tions are most evident and most skill- fully realized. We should note in this regard the ingenious dialogue between the two pianos and the col- oristic effects in the Coda, where the composer was admittedly thinking of the Balinese music he had heard at the Colonial Exposition of 1931. Next is a Larghetto, whose broad outlines are quite classical, with outer sections in a spirit of hom- mage to Mozart, while the central episode reveals the more distinctive Poulenc, with its unashamed senti- mentality. The Finale is an Allegro molto, perhaps not always as well disciplined as the preceding move- ments; here Poulenc’s melodic and harmonic facility is almost too bountiful, yet Poulenc is still tri- umphant, imposing a unity of inimi- table brilliance.

From notes by CLAUDE ROSTAND

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MORE BY PRETRE ON ANGEL

(S) indicates Stereo.

POULENC: Gloria (Rosanna Carteri, soprano; Chorus of the RTF) ; Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani (Maurice Duruflé). Orchestre National de

la RTF. Winner, Grand Prix du Disque.

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“CONTEMPORARY BALLETS FROM FRANCE” — Poulenc: Les Biches; Dutilleux: Le Loup; Milhaud: La Création du monde. Orchestre de la Société des Con-

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“RUSSIAN ORCHESTRAL MASTERPIECES”’—Moussorgsky: A Night on Bald Mountain; Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio espagnol; Borodin: Polovtsian Dances from “Prince Igor” and In the Steppes of Central Asia. Royal Phil-

harmonic Orchestra.

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“THE VOICE OF WAGNER” — Five Wesendonck Lieder and exerpts from Die Walkiire, Parsifal and Lohengrin (Régine Crespin, soprano). Orchestre

National de la RTF. Winner, Grand Prix du Disque.

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This monophonic, microgroove recording may be played on monophonic or stereo phonographs. It will not become obsolete. Produced in accordance with the most demanding standards of engineering and manufacture. it will remain the source of excellent sound.