Search - Poulenc, Tacchino, Pretre :: Piano Concerto / Concerto for 2 Pianos / Aubade

One Of The Finest Poulenc CDs

Jeffrey Lipscomb | Sacramento, CA United States | 06/07/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Few French composers are as consistently delightful as Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). His music has a joie de vivre and sparkling wit that are simply irresistable. This well-recorded CD contains three works that show Poulenc at his most bon vivant. The "Aubade" from about 1929 was originally composed as a ballet, but later became a "concerto choregraphique" for piano and 18 instruments. It abounds with gestures that recall both Mozart and Stravinsky, but there is no mistaking the music as quintessentially Poulenc's.



The Piano Concerto (1949) has moments of serene calm mixed with subtle wit. The finale has a theme with bizarre echoes of Stephen Foster's "Old Folks At Home" (Way down upon the Swanee River), mixed with French can-can and some sort of Brazilian dance tune. What a mix!



The Concerto for Two Pianos (1932), to my mind one of Poulenc's very greatest works, is filled with adroit borrowings and witty parody. This was one of Poulenc's efforts that earned him a reputation among some critics as an amiable "magpie." For me, Poulenc's music is a virtual paradise of "musical detective" work. There are so many clever references to other composers here, all heard through a fractured prism that is slightly sentimental and extraordinarily clever. For example, there is a riff on Javanese gamelan music (Poulenc, Roussel and other French composers were apparently bowled over by an exhibition of gamelan works at a 1931 Paris exhibition), plus sundry elements of jazz. Try the Larghetto, track 13: a Mozart piano sonata is imitated, then comes a sentimental rendering of the slow mvt. theme from Mozart's Piano Concerto #21 (aka "Elvira Madigan"). What evolves is a lovely original tune that I think film composer John Williams lifted as a principal theme in his score for the re-make of "Sabrina." And all this occurs within 5 minutes!



The performances here are wonderfully idiomatic. Conductor Georges Pretre was closely associated with Poulenc and premiered several of the composer's works. Pianist Gabriel Tacchino is in the Aubade and the Piano Concerto, and he is joined by Bernard Ringeissen in the Two Piano Concerto. I have never heard better played or recorded performances of these pieces, although I am also very fond of Pretre's earlier recording of the 2-piano work with Jacques Fevrier and Poulenc himself on the keyboards (it's a bit slower than this later one, likely a concession to the composer's more limited digital abilities).



Highly recommended!



Jeff Lipscomb"