Gloria Poulenc

A generous selection of Poulenc’s wonderful and varied liturgical works has been recorded here by Westminster Cathedral Choir, whose natural and unforced style of singing is perfectly suited to the composer’s ‘naïve’, spontaneous outpourings. The Mass in G major is one of the most important a cappella works of the twentieth century, and includes some of Poulenc’s most beautiful and tender music.

Francis Poulenc - Poulenc d'après Poulenc (1988) {Pearl GEMM CD 9311}
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© 1988 Pearl | GEMM CD 9311
Classical / 20th Century / Chamber Music / Neo-Romantic / Piano / Historical

Francis Poulenc (1899 – 1963) was a French composer almost as famous for his personal life as his music, including his Gloria and piano works. Born in Paris in 1899, Poulenc's mother was an amateur pianist who taught him to play. As a young composer, he was influenced by musicians like Debussy, Satie, and Stravinsky - he caught the latter's attention with his first surviving composition, Rapsodie Nègre, written in 1917.

This is the simply a slpendid recording- well paced, energetic and in excellent sound. I have a suspicion that many people drawn to these works pay undo emphasis on the choir [or they are choir singers] and understandably get frustrating when the choir is not front and center in the musical proceedings. But what Poulenc wrote here does not emphasize the choir [he was a master instrumentalist after all!] so the orchestra should be more prominent at times. Ragardless, this is a great performance!

On this recording, they perform a comprehensive selection of Overtures by Francis Poulenc. Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) is not an easy composer to relate to. Not the man himself perhaps – though possibly that too – but his music. It is somehow dated. Here is a composer who produced his best works, all more or less completely tonal, at a time when Arnold Schoenberg was writing twelve-tone music and Poulenc’s countrymen Oliver Messiaen (1908–1992) and Pierre Boulez (1925–2016) were into innovative rhythms, scales and techniques to lift the music out of the realm of subjective emotionalism. One of Poulenc’s most splendid works, Gloria, from 1959, was composed two years after Boulez’s third piano sonata. The two works have nothing in common other than that they both consist of notes and belong to what is called the European music tradition. What’s more, I am reasonably certain that Gloria has many more listeners than the third piano sonata of Boulez, quite simply because this melodious choral work is more accessible…

It may not contain everything written by French modernist composer Francis Poulenc – the solo works, the chamber works, the stage works, and the songs with piano accompaniment are naturally not included – but Charles Dutoit's five-disc set of the orchestral works, the concerted works, the sacred choral works, and the vocal works with orchestral accompaniment by Poulenc has everything else that matters and lots, lots more. It has the charming Piano Concerto and the delightful Two Piano Concerto, the impressive Organ Concerto and the beguiling harpsichord concerto called Concert champêtre, the four-movement Sinfonietta and the seven-movement Suite française, the ballet Les biches and the Concerto chorégraphique called Aubade, plus 11 other shorter orchestral works.

Poulenc’s 'Stabat Mater', which he described as a ‘requiem without despair’, was written in 1950 following the death of Christian Bérard who designed the sets for Cocteau’s films and plays and was a leading figure of 1940s Paris. This masterly work, dedicated to the Virgin of Rocamadour, gives pride of place to the chorus and clearly shows its line of descent from the French grands motets. On completing it, Poulenc wrote to Pierre Bernac: "It’s good, because it’s completely authentic".