The art of Poulenc and Milhaud is an outgrowth of what in the last analysis was a minor artistic revolution following the first World War. The members of the once closely fused group that formed Les Six were Milhaud, Auric, Honegger, Poulenc, Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre. Their spiritual and cultural guides were Satie and Cocteau ; the creations they produced with amazing profuseness were hydra-headed and defy an attempt to catalogue them comfortably. They range from solemn masses to satire in the jazz idiom, from imitation of the baroque to frail and exquisite vocal and chamber pieces. Effects are often contrived by daring juxtaposition of the antique and the currently popular. If one makes a careful selection, however, omitting the sheerly rhetorical, the purely virtuosic, the deliberately daring, or the attempts to confound the senses with multiple novel appeals, we are left with a fairly large number of works of enduring interest, all exhibiting talent of a high order, skillful manipulation of "sound" forces, twentieth century sophistication, and entertainment value on no mean level. Three of the six (Milhaud, Poulenc, Honegger) still arouse keen public interest and are likely to survive through isolated compositions of their varied output.
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The present disc features material of Poulenc and Milhaud that is particularly attractive. In his Three Pieces for Piano, Poulenc, an especially gifted miniaturist, reveals his facile and familiar charm — "the sophistication of the graceful" as Cocteau phrased it — a blend of folk melody and rhythms cast in the salon style and maintaining a carefully calculated balance between gentle lyricism and jeu d’esprit. "Improvisation", "Humoresque", and "Valse" are characterized by lightness, skipping grace, and artfully fluid movement. Melodies are made rhythmically piquant but stop this side of angularity. Poulenc is a very well behaved modern who imposes very definite bounds on his modernity. His material must conform to his own standards of charm, style, and sleek finish. His is the music of the nineteenth century drawing room — mood vignettes which, while giving off the same air of elegant nostalgia and sentiment as their predecessors, know enough to bar tedium by variety, to hark back to the old, daringly to allow an intrusion of the popular, to distract with a discord, to anticipate the experienced listener’s reaction by mocking the very mood he has set.
Bernard Lebow (from the original Liner Notes)
Annette Haas-Hamburger
Plays
Poulenc
Milhaud
Tracks
Francis Poulenc
(1899-1963)
Piano Concerto, FP 146
1 I. Allegretto 10:12
2 II. Andante con moto (Commencer très calmement) 4:57
3 III. Rondeau à la Française (Presto giocoso) 4:09
Darius Milhaud
(1892-1974)
Suite For Violin, Clarinet & Piano, Op. 157b
4 Ouverture 1:38
5 Divertissment 2:52
6 Jeu 1:29
7 Introduction & Final 5:40
Francis Poulenc
(1899-1963)
Three Pieces For Piano
8 Improvisation 1:26
9 Humoresque 1:50
10 Valse 1:46
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Annette Haas-Hamburger - p
Jacques Parrenin - vl
Ulysse Delécluze - cl
Orchestre de l'Association des Concerts Pasdeloup - Pierre Dervaux - dir.
Recorded ca 1953