Francis French

The first presentation of A Man and a Woman on CD in stereo – from the original album masters housed in the MGM vaults, in both French and English versions. One of the finest soundtrack albums of the 1960s came in 1966, when Francis Lai composed much of the music for Claude Lelouch's French film A Man and a Woman (Un Homme et une Femme in French). Most European films enjoy very little publicity in the U.S., but A Man and a Woman was an exception because the soundtrack was so superb. With this classic LP, Lai and his allies (who include arrangers Maurice Vander and Ivan Julien) brought together French pop, jazz, and the Brazilian bossa nova (which Antonio Carlos Jobim, Stan Getz, and João Gilberto had popularized in the early 1960s). The bossa nova was as hot in Europe as it was in North America, and France's interest in Brazilian music is underscored by sensuous, caressing Lai offerings like "Aujourd'hui C'est Toi" and the famous title song – all of which feature French vocalists Nicole Croisille and/or Pierre Barouh. While Lai composed most of the melodies, Barouh provided the French lyrics – including some lyrics that he wrote for Brazilian composer Baden Powell's "Samba Saravah." Barouh has a soft, gentle quality to his voice, and he frequently brings to mind another gentle singer: João Gilberto. A five-star collection of mood music, this soundtrack has held up extremely well over the years.

A few of these small choral gems are well known to amateur choirs, and Poulenc's secular choral pieces are more often presented one at a time on choral albums than in the groupings in which they were originally included. Francis Poulenc: Secular Choral Music offers the composer's very first choral piece, the Chanson à boire for men's voices (1922), but most of the music here dates from either the late '30s (the Petites voix, for female or children's voices, and Sept chansons) or the World War II era (Un soir de neige), the folk-song settings entitled Chansons françaises, and the ambitious Figure humaine, whose final number, "Liberté," was dropped in sheet music form over French cities by Britain's Royal Air Force. Someone once described Poulenc as "part monk, part hooligan," and these a cappella choral works give evidence of both tendencies. The Chansons françaises are cheerful pieces with just a shade of extended harmony, almost French counterparts to Bartók's folk song settings, while the more serious pieces, such as "Un chien perdu" (A Lost Dog), from the Petites voix, have a mystical tinge that links them strongly with Poulenc's better-known sacred choral music.

Understandably, Poulenc's Gloria and Stabat Mater have almost invariably been coupled together on LPs and CDs. Similarly scored for solo soprano, chorus, and orchestra, the two works are arguably the twin peaks of Poulenc's sacred music, that is, they are irresistibly melodic, energetically rhythmic, directly emotional, conservatively harmonic, and fervently religious. That said, however, the difference in tone between the two works is as striking as their similarities. Where the Gloria is light, bright, and at times even funny, the Stabat Mater, as befits its subject matter, is dark, heavy, and always deeply sorrowful. In this pair of performances with Georges Prêtre leading the Orchestre National de France and the French Radio Choir from the '80s, both works are given the deluxe French treatment. Prêtre is as skilled at balancing his forces as he is at keeping the music moving, and, as importantly, he is as capable of expressing the Gloria's joyous wit as he is of articulating the Stabat Mater's profound suffering. But the real star of these performances is American soprano Barbara Hendricks whose clear, warm voice and excellent diction breath vibrant life into all Poulenc's glorious melodies.

This programme of 1920s French music is in the hands of a conductor who gets right into the spirit of it, and plenty of spirit there is too. Apart from the Ibert, this is ballet music, and that work too originated as a theatre piece, having been incidental music for Eugene Labiche's farce The Italian Straw Hat. Poulenc's unfailingly fresh and bouncy suite from Les biches is very enjoyable although Chandos's warm and resonant recording takes some of the edge off the trumpet tone that is so central to the writing. The geniality of it all makes one forget that this is remarkable music in which (as Christopher Palmer's booklet essay points out) the twentieth-century French composer evokes eighteenth-century fetes galantes through the eyes of that greatest of nineteenth-century ballet composers, Tchaikovsky.