Concerto for two pianos (Poulenc)
Encyclopedia
Francis Poulenc
's Concerto for two pianos in D minor, FP 61, was commissioned by and dedicated to the Princess Edmond de Polignac and composed over the period of three months in the summer of 1932. The work has three movements
: Allegro ma non troppo, Larghetto, and Allegro molto. The premiere was given on September 5, 1932, at the International Society for Contemporary Music in Venice. Poulenc and his childhood friend Jacques Février
were concerto soloists with the La Scala Orchestra, with Désiré Defauw (later conductor of the Chicago Symphony) conducting. Poulenc was gratified by the warm acclaim his work received, and later performed the concerto with Benjamin Britten
in England in 1945. The Concerto for Two Pianos often described as the last work of Poulenc’s early period. The composer himself wrote to the Belgian musicologist Paul Collaer: "You will see for yourself what an enormous step forward it is from my previous work and that I am really entering my great period."
The concerto's recurring moto perpetuo, modally inflected figurations are clearly inspired by Poulenc's encounter with a Balinese gamelan
at the 1931 Exposition Coloniale de Paris. Additionally, the work's instrumentation and "jazzy" effects are reminiscent of Ravel's G major Concerto, which was premiered at Paris in January 1932. Inevitably, comparisons have been drawn with Mozart’s Concerto in E-flat for two pianos, K. 365
, but the slow movement Larghetto's graceful, classically simple melody and gentle, regular accompaniment have reminded some writers of the slow movement of Mozart's C major Piano Concerto, K. 467
. Poulenc wrote in a letter to Igor Markevitch
, "Would you like to know what I had on my piano during the two months gestation of the Concerto? The concertos of Mozart, those of Liszt, that of Ravel, and your Partita".
s and an orchestra of flute
, piccolo
, two oboe
s (second doubling cor anglais
), two clarinet
s, two bassoon
s, two horns, two trumpet
s, two trombone
s, tuba
, shallow snare drum, snare drum
, bass drum
, castanets, triangle, military drum, suspended cymbal
, and strings
.
2. Larghetto. In the gently rocking, consciously naive Larghetto, Poulenc evokes the famous Andante from Mozart’s C Major Concerto, K. 467 (known as the "Elvira Madigan" movement). The increasingly sonorous, steadily building middle section echoes the spirit of Camille Saint-Saëns
, who, though indefatigably French, could in his serious moments be among the most Mozartean of 19th-century composers. Poulenc commented, "In the Larghetto of this Concerto I permitted myself, for the first theme, to return to Mozart, because I have a fondness for the melodic line and I prefer Mozart to all other musicians. If the movement begins alla Mozart, it quickly diverges at the entrance of the second piano, toward a style that was familiar to me at the time."
3. Allegro molto. Poulenc’s finale is a syncretic Rondo
that merges the insouciance of a Parisian music hall and the mesmerizing sonorities of a gamelan orchestra. Its scintillating patter and energetic rhythms produce a vivacious, effervescent effect. As did his idol Mozart, Poulenc favors us with profligate melodious invention, featuring a new theme for nearly each succeeding section. His biographer Henri Hell has observed, "the finale flirts with one of those deliberately vulgar themes never far from the composer’s heart."
As brilliant as it sounds, the Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos demands of its piano soloists more skills of ensemble than of technique. Although the pianos intersperse conversational interludes, conventional cadenzas are absent. Throughout the concerto, the pianists play nearly continuously, sometimes unaccompanied by the orchestra. Poulenc creates a dramatic yet charming dialogue between the two keyboards and the supporting orchestra ensemble. Unusually, his orchestration foregrounds the woodwinds, brass and percussion, relegating the strings to an unfamiliar secondary role.
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
's Concerto for two pianos in D minor, FP 61, was commissioned by and dedicated to the Princess Edmond de Polignac and composed over the period of three months in the summer of 1932. The work has three movements
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...
: Allegro ma non troppo, Larghetto, and Allegro molto. The premiere was given on September 5, 1932, at the International Society for Contemporary Music in Venice. Poulenc and his childhood friend Jacques Février
Jacques Février
Jacques Février was a French pianist and teacher.Jacques Février was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the son of the composer Henry Février. He studied with Édouard Risler and Marguerite Long at the Paris Conservatoire, taking a premier prix in 1921...
were concerto soloists with the La Scala Orchestra, with Désiré Defauw (later conductor of the Chicago Symphony) conducting. Poulenc was gratified by the warm acclaim his work received, and later performed the concerto with Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
in England in 1945. The Concerto for Two Pianos often described as the last work of Poulenc’s early period. The composer himself wrote to the Belgian musicologist Paul Collaer: "You will see for yourself what an enormous step forward it is from my previous work and that I am really entering my great period."
The concerto's recurring moto perpetuo, modally inflected figurations are clearly inspired by Poulenc's encounter with a Balinese gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
at the 1931 Exposition Coloniale de Paris. Additionally, the work's instrumentation and "jazzy" effects are reminiscent of Ravel's G major Concerto, which was premiered at Paris in January 1932. Inevitably, comparisons have been drawn with Mozart’s Concerto in E-flat for two pianos, K. 365
Piano Concerto No. 10 (Mozart)
The Concerto No. 10 in E-flat major for Two Pianos, K. 365/316a, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was written in 1779. Mozart wrote it to play with his sister Maria Anna . He was 23 years old and on the verge of leaving Salzburg for Vienna....
, but the slow movement Larghetto's graceful, classically simple melody and gentle, regular accompaniment have reminded some writers of the slow movement of Mozart's C major Piano Concerto, K. 467
Piano Concerto No. 21 (Mozart)
The Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, was completed on March 9, 1785 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, four weeks after the completion of the previous D minor concerto.- Structure :There are three movements....
. Poulenc wrote in a letter to Igor Markevitch
Igor Markevitch
Igor Markevitch was a Ukrainian, Italian, and French composer and conductor.- Origin :Igor Markevich was born in Kiev, to an old family of Ukrainian Cossack starshyna ennobled in the 18th century...
, "Would you like to know what I had on my piano during the two months gestation of the Concerto? The concertos of Mozart, those of Liszt, that of Ravel, and your Partita".
Instrumentation
The concerto is scored for two solo pianoPiano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
s and an orchestra of flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, piccolo
Piccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
, two oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
s (second doubling cor anglais
Cor anglais
The cor anglais , or English horn , is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family....
), two clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
s, two bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
s, two horns, two trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
s, two trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
s, tuba
Tuba
The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...
, shallow snare drum, snare drum
Snare drum
The snare drum or side drum is a melodic percussion instrument with strands of snares made of curled metal wire, metal cable, plastic cable, or gut cords stretched across the drumhead, typically the bottom. Pipe and tabor and some military snare drums often have a second set of snares on the bottom...
, bass drum
Bass drum
Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...
, castanets, triangle, military drum, suspended cymbal
Cymbal
Cymbals are a common percussion instrument. Cymbals consist of thin, normally round plates of various alloys; see cymbal making for a discussion of their manufacture. The greater majority of cymbals are of indefinite pitch, although small disc-shaped cymbals based on ancient designs sound a...
, and strings
String section
The string section is the largest body of the standard orchestra and consists of bowed string instruments of the violin family.It normally comprises five sections: the first violins, the second violins, the violas, the cellos, and the double basses...
.
Form
1. Allegro ma non troppo. Poulenc chooses to bypass the conventions of sonata allegro in the opening movement in favor of ternary form, with a slower middle section. If this first movement is meant to evoke Mozart, it is the blithe composer of the delightful Divertimenti and Serenades. The general affect is “gay and direct,” words Poulenc often used to describe his own music. The concerto features simple ABA form in the first and second movements, but suggests a more complex rondo form with intervening episodes in the finale.2. Larghetto. In the gently rocking, consciously naive Larghetto, Poulenc evokes the famous Andante from Mozart’s C Major Concerto, K. 467 (known as the "Elvira Madigan" movement). The increasingly sonorous, steadily building middle section echoes the spirit of Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
, who, though indefatigably French, could in his serious moments be among the most Mozartean of 19th-century composers. Poulenc commented, "In the Larghetto of this Concerto I permitted myself, for the first theme, to return to Mozart, because I have a fondness for the melodic line and I prefer Mozart to all other musicians. If the movement begins alla Mozart, it quickly diverges at the entrance of the second piano, toward a style that was familiar to me at the time."
3. Allegro molto. Poulenc’s finale is a syncretic Rondo
Rondo
Rondo, and its French equivalent rondeau, is a word that has been used in music in a number of ways, most often in reference to a musical form, but also to a character-type that is distinct from the form...
that merges the insouciance of a Parisian music hall and the mesmerizing sonorities of a gamelan orchestra. Its scintillating patter and energetic rhythms produce a vivacious, effervescent effect. As did his idol Mozart, Poulenc favors us with profligate melodious invention, featuring a new theme for nearly each succeeding section. His biographer Henri Hell has observed, "the finale flirts with one of those deliberately vulgar themes never far from the composer’s heart."
As brilliant as it sounds, the Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos demands of its piano soloists more skills of ensemble than of technique. Although the pianos intersperse conversational interludes, conventional cadenzas are absent. Throughout the concerto, the pianists play nearly continuously, sometimes unaccompanied by the orchestra. Poulenc creates a dramatic yet charming dialogue between the two keyboards and the supporting orchestra ensemble. Unusually, his orchestration foregrounds the woodwinds, brass and percussion, relegating the strings to an unfamiliar secondary role.
Quotes
External links
- Pianopedia page http://www.pianopedia.com/w_1183_poulenc.aspx
- San Francisco Symphony program notes http://www.sfsymphony.org/music/ProgramNotes.aspx?id=33252
- CSO program notes http://www.chisham.com/tips/bbs/feb2002/messages/83958.html
- Classical Archives page http://www.classicalarchives.com/work/110476.html#tvf=tracks&tv=about
- New World Symphony program notes http://www.nws.edu/downloads/programNotes/PoulencConcertoforTwoPianos.pdf