Francis Poulenc (1899–1963)
Cello Sonata FP 143 (1940-48, rev. 1953)
Sonata for piano four hands FP 8 (1918, rev. 1939)
Mouvements perpétuels FP 14 (1918, rev. 1939/1962)
Nocturnes FP 56 No. 1 (1929)
Improvisations FP 63 Nos 1, 2 & 7 (1934)
Sonata for two pianos FP 156 (1953)
Pascal Rogé, Elena Font (piano)
Lidy Blijdorp (cello)
rec. 2025, St George’s Headstone, Harrow, UK
Reviewed as lossless download
Onyx 4271 [66]
Each time I encounter music by Francis Poulenc, I resolve to spend more time listening to it. This new recording, featuring renowned French pianist Pascal Rogé and his two young colleagues – Dutch cellist Lidy Blijdorp and Spanish pianist Elena Font – only strengthens that resolve.
I think I would have placed the Cello Sonata in the middle of the program, to “break up” the piano music, but wherever it is positioned, it remains a wonderful and somewhat under-appreciated work. As always with the mature Poulenc, its moods are mercurial, nostalgic and beautiful melodies interspersed with jaunty rhythms, humour and spiky dissonance. Rogé and Blijdorp give a really inspired performance here, dealing with the changing moods with tenderness and verve as required. My first encounter with the work was a decade ago, a reading on the Claves label which I felt was good, without matching some of the better regarded (review). This new version is quicker in all four movements, and this does help tighten up the slower sections, and make the faster ones sound even more impressive.
The Sonata for Piano Four Hands is an early work (though revised in 1939), all over in less than seven minutes, and while it does not have the finesse of his mature music, it has the hallmarks of what was to come. I think the version on Chandos with Louis Lourtie and Hélène Mercier has a little more crispness in the outer movements and tenderness in the slow, but the difference is not great.
The three Mouvements perpétuels are also early, but in this case, fully the work of a teenager. They are quite charming miniatures, with the “scoundrel” Poulenc very much in the background. A similar comment could be made about the selections from the Nocturnes and Improvisations, though they are clearly more polished, the product of a more mature composer. One might have expected that the senior of the two pianists would play these, but allows his regular piano duo partner Elena Font to demonstrate her considerable talents. She doesn’t make the mistake of trying to make too much of the pieces, but their qualities are still well and truly on display.
The two combine for the Sonata for Two Pianos, a work, like the Cello Sonata, of his later years. It has an atmosphere of disquiet and anxiety for much of its twenty-plus minutes. The rhythms are more edgy, the humour seems forced and the dissonance more spiky. Even the lovely melodies feel more restrained and melancholy. Poulenc suffered a number of depression-related episodes throughout his adult life, and apparently problems with the opera Dialogues des Carmélites (which he was attempting to compose at the same time as the Sonata) did trigger another event, so that may go some way to explain the mood underlying the Sonata. The work is fairly well-represented in the catalogue, and this is Pascal Rogé’s second recording of it, the first more than 30 years ago on Decca with Jean-Philippe Collard. The majority of versions that I checked on the Naxos Music Library had a duration of 24 minutes, whereas this new one runs to 22:17 and the Rogé/Collard almost a minute quicker. The dedicatees – Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale – take a little over twenty, in a recording that presumably had the blessing of the composer. In general, the quicker tempos do seem to produce a more satisfying outcome, and Rogé and Font’s is right up there with the best I’ve heard. Mind you, there is one recording by Nikolai Lugansky and Vadim Rudenko which comes in at just over 17 minutes: this isn’t a case of repeats not taken, they simply plough through the slow parts at allegro pace – a very strange reading.
The sound quality is very good, capturing the changing timbre of the instruments very well. If I have a complaint about this recording, it is one that shows how much I enjoyed it. With a runtime of 66 minutes, surely there was the chance to include more of the eight Nocturnes and fifteen Improvisations.
This is a very fine recording, the Cello Sonata perhaps the outstanding performance, but the other works aren’t far behind. Regardless of where you are on your Poulenc journey, it is one you should hear.
David Barker
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