Poulenc?

[odsum25]

I love Poulenc, but don't know much about his solo piano ouevre other than it exists.  Anyone have any suggestions about pieces to listen to or look at the scores to? I would love to play some of his music. What are his finest piano works?

[mrdaveux]

His 15 improvisations are among the best of his solo output. My favorite are #1, 13 and 15. I have the Naxos recording (Poulenc piano #3), but you will find that these are usually ignored or neglected on or off records.

[pianonut]

i'm no poulenc scholar (but happen to love many of his pieces).  i've got a book here (roeder's history of the piano concerto) and on page 362 it says:

"poulenc, a gifted pianist, composed five concertante works, all featuring keyboard instruments - piano in three, organ and harpsichord in one each.  the earliest, for harpsichord, is probably the most obviously based upon neo-classical models.  the 'concert champetre' (pastoral concerto) for harpsichord and orchestra was inspired by a great harpsichordist of the first part of this century, wanda landowska."

reading on, poulenc said it was she who "fired his interest in the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century french masters."  she played his concert champetre in october 1928 and poulenc accompanied her with an orchestral reduction on the piano!

his 'aubade: concerto choreographique' was for piano and an orchestra of eighteen instruments.  "it was conceived as a ballet to feature, simultaneously, a dancer and a pianist.  nijinsky created the original choreography to the story written by poulenc."  (i don't know the story - maybe will check into it).  anyway...then there's the more traditional

concerto in D minor for two pianos and orchestra (1932) and is one of the composer's most widely heard compositions.  poulenc and his boyhood friend jacques fevrier played the first performance.  "the pianos play throughout the work, frequently alone, but they are rarely given truly virtuosic display material."  it hints at prokofiev's lyricism.  there is also an element of balinese music in the coda of the first movement.

then there's the organ concerto (skipping this since we're talking piano) and also his last piano concerto which was commissioned by the Boston symphony orchestra for poulenc's 1949 tour with singer pierre bernac.  this has three mvements. reflect poulenc's late serious style, relies on strings a lot, and uses light-hearted, thematic material in the last movement of the concerto (you can hear strains of stephen foster's 'old folks at home' and offenbach's cancan tune - and various tango related rhythms).  there is not a lot of solo virtuosic playing for the piano, though.

[pianonut]

am currently working poulenc's 'tre pieces.'  interesting harmonies.

[c18cont]

Of course we are talking piano...

(but don't skip the organ/strings/typ concerto if you get a chance to HEAR it...It is a really great work according to the study texts...I do love it..)

John

[gkatele]

Also check out his noctures. I'm working on the #1 in C and it's really nice - big arps in the left hand and all those quirky, yet melodic harmonies in the right.

Lotsa fun.

George

Oh, almost forgot - the perpetual motions are nice as well.

[Dazzer]

its not about virtuousity... this isn't liszt.

and i think in french its Trois Pieces, not tres.

Go for his Napoli suite... short and gorgeous. Or his three novelletes.

His works are really mostly short lighthearted pieces. But that's not to say there aren't some really great gems in there.

I love his piano concertos too.

[Teddybear]

I've only heard Soirées de Nazelles, which I thought was pretty. The recording was by Pascal Rogé. He's not bad at all. I also enjoyed his Saint-Saëns concerto collection.

Even though it's not actual piano music, I warmly recommend his sonata for clarinet and piano (Sharon Kam has made a brilliant recording).

T