Pascal Rogé, 17/04/2015

Poulenc : 3 Mouvements perpétuels
Poulenc : 3 Improvisations (12, 14, 15)
Poulenc : 3 Novelettes
Ravel : Sonatine
Poulenc : Soirées de Nazelles

Pascal Rogé, piano
Back in the 70s, Pascal Rogé's early Decca recordings were my first introduction to the piano music of Ravel, but Poulenc's piano music (his solo piano music, that is), came much later, long after I had discovered the orchestral and vocal works.  They're still not as widely performed as all that, partly, I suspect, because Poulenc himself was not all that fond of them, and the first little group of today's programme, the Mouvements perpétuels have a tendency to show up as make-weights, more than anything else, which is rather a pity.

This was a lunchtime concert, and Rogé played through the entire sequence without interruption, requesting that applause be kept to the very end.  This worked very well, immersing us in a very particular sound-world, into which the Ravel fitted effortlessly.  What was immediately noticeable about Rogé's interpretation was how comfortably he negotiated Poulenc's mercurial changes of mood.  In some pianists' hands, they can seem almost schizophrenic, the interpreter never really sure which line to take; Rogé found a clear, direct, central path, as if wandering through a botanic garden, or along a riverside, with the shifts of mood as points of scenic interest along the way, yet never throwing you out of the overall atmosphere.

The Poulenc works covered most of his life, from 1919, when he was still a teenager, writing the Mouvements perpétuels, to the late 50s, when the last of the Novelettes and the later Improvisations appeared.  The short forms like this show his influences.  Stravinsky is much less noticeable here than it is in his orchestral or chamber works, but there is a hint of Bach (can any organist escape that?), a cheeky wink to Chopin, a nod to Schumann (worshipped by many French musicians to the point of idolatry, then and now), as well as a good deal of auto-citation, or something very close to it.  Poulenc himself considered that his best piano writing was in his song accompaniments, and that is what flickers into view from time to time in these pieces.

The Ravel predates the earliest of the Poulenc pieces by about fifteen years, but the same qualities of clarity and lyricism were apparent.  The first movement was played in a slightly idiosyncratic manner that ruffled my feathers a bit, but the rest was admirable, and had the clearer left hand that I felt was sometimes missing a little in the Poulenc.  Then came the main item, the Soirées de Nazelles suite with variations, which are character miniatures of various (unspecified) friends of Poulenc's.  This is a more substantial item, and the writing is denser than in the short pieces, but the hallmarks are still there, the quick changes of mood, the enigmatic cadences, and fleeting moments of intense lyricism that never became cloying.  A well-spent hour of rhapsodic elegance and wit.

[Next : 24th April]