Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos - COMPLETE LIVE PERFORMANCE

Francis Poulenc was born in Paris on January 7, 1899, and died there on January 30, 1963. The Concerto in D minor, commissioned by and dedicated to the Princess Edmonde de Polignac, was premiered on September 5, 1932, at the International Society for Contemporary Music in Venice. Poulenc and his friend Jacques Février were the soloists, with Désiré Defauw conducting the La Scala Orchestra. "Le Bal masqué and the Concerto, I assure you, are pure Poulenc," wrote the composer to a friend. And to another he remarked, "From childhood onwards I have associated cafe tunes with the Couperin suites in a common love without distinguishing them." The Concerto for Two Pianos combines Maurice Chevalier with Mozart, music hall buffoonery with Balinese gamelan and lilting melodies, all with a touch of innocent hedonism. The work is cast in the traditional three movments: The outer two brim with saucy melodies and unbridled exuberance, never lapsing into vulgarity or mawkish sentimentality; the middle slow movement is neoclassical in spirit (Poulenc has invoked his beloved Mozart), with a central section more Romantic in inspiration. Poulenc heard a Balinese gamelan at the Colonial Exposition of Paris in 1931, and he has incorporated bits of that music as well, most tellingly at the end of the first movement, where, after a pianissimo clack of the castanets, the two pianos commence an extraordinary passage of mysterious and hypnotic reverie. A faster version of this Balinese-inspired music opens and closes the work; in doing so, it acts as an effective bracket for the surfeit of charming, infectious tunes within. This enduring and endearing concerto is indeed "pure Poulenc."

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