CD cover: Poulenc. Stars: 4/5 Verdict: A musical bad boy bares heart and soul in his religious works
It
is not difficult to fall in love with the music of Francis Poulenc.
This Deutsche Grammophon collection of his choral music gives a clue to
the appeal of the Frenchman when he is described, on its back cover, as a
"bad boy" among 20th century French composers. He was also a masterly
exponent of sacred music.
Poulenc was not so much bad as
mischievous and provocative, as one might expect from a founding member
of those 1920s livewires, Les Six.
This composer's music keeps you
guessing. It runs the gamut from the stark neoclassicism of the early
woodwind sonatas to utterly gorgeous songs that present life as an
eternal cabaret of the soul.
Hollywood must have known something
when Poulenc's Mouvements Perpetuels were threaded through the
soundtrack of Hitchcock's 1948 Rope.
The first work on this
exemplary recording from the Salle Pleyel, the doyenne of French concert
halls, is Poulenc's 1961 Gloria. Written in the year before he died, it
is a score of unsullied optimism.
Finnish conductor Paavo Jarvi,
the Orchestre de Paris and its choir deal out exhilaration right from
the opening bars in which faux-Baroque grandeur swoops into cocktail
lounge harmonies. These days, it sounds more and more like John Adams on
every hearing.
A
little more legato would have been nice from soloist Patricia Petibon,
but the soprano suspends the sighing Domine Deus, Agnus Dei so elegantly
over the choir, like a piece of ecclesiastical musique noire.
Petibon
is more forceful in Poulenc's 1950 Stabat Mater, a heartfelt response
to the death of his friend, the gay artist and designer Christian
Berard. The delicate emotions when she sings of the forsaken Christ
contrast dramatically with the visceral drive of the Cuius animam and
Inflammatus.
Separating these major works is his Litanies a la
Vierge Noire. Also occasioned by the death of a close friend, this 1937
piece has the women of the choir and the orchestra - so much more
effective than alternative organ accompaniment - maintaining the balance
of humility and fervour that the composer wanted.
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