POULENC: Gloria; Organ Concerto in G Minor; SATIE: Parade: 3 excerpts; Deux Morceau en Forme de Poire: Enleve II; Redite – Rosanna Carteri, sop./ French Nat. Radio & Television Chorus/ Yvonne Gouvorne/ Maurice Durufle, organ/ French Nat. Radio & Television Orch./ Georges Pretre/ Georges Auric & Francis Poulenc, piano – Pristine Audio PASC 324, 65:35 [various formats avail. at www.pristine classical.com] ****:
Originally released 21 February 1961 through EMI, the 1938 Organ Concerto for Tympani and String Orchestra with Maurice Durufle and Georges Pretre suffered poor synchronicity between organ and orchestra, each having been pitched badly, and Andrew Rose of Pristine has remedied much of the situation. Now, the one-movement work, which falls into four classical sections much in the manner of a Schubert or Liszt concert piece, achieves an incandescent luster that can boast tonal accuracy as well as brilliant execution. Devout in character, the piece elicited from Poulenc that it lay “on the fringe of my religious works.”
Pretre and Durufle take the Allegro giocoso at a furious pace, the layering by Durufle thickly ecstatic. Immediately following, the Subito andante moderato expresses a meditative devotional character and ethereal spirituality as only a composer comfortable in plainchant can attain. The influence of Bach and Buxtehude becomes quite palpable, and we hear Poulenc “en route to the cloister.” The Molto agitato becomes emotionally inflamed, with Durufle’s sounding out pedaled chromatics that explode into a rather dizzy melodic line that well might owe debts to Liszt, especially in his own transcription of Bach’s G Minor Organ Fugue. The texture of the Tres calme: Lent moves in diaphanous wisps after the piled chromatics that preceded it. Materials from the concerto’s opening recur cyclically in bravura style; and after a semi-cadenza by the organ, Durufle and Pretre bring the ambitious, diversely colored concerto to dignified conclusion.
Soprano Rosanna Carteri (b. 1930) appears in the Poulenc 1961 Gloria in G Major (rec. 15 February 1961), and she reaches several fine lyric, coloratura moments that remind us of her impressive work with Monteux in Verdi’s La Traviata. Commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, the work elicits from Poulenc extraordinary writing harmonically and texturally, the askew treatment of words suited to the equally angular rhythmic pulses. The B Minor Laudamus Te, after a brass fanfare, extends the metric virtuosity, despite its “easy” key signature of C Major. The Domine Deus belongs to Carteri’s haunting collaboration with the chorus, woodwinds and harp. The short but extroverted Domini Fili unigenite in G leads to the Domine Deus, Agnus Dei in B-flat Minor, in which Carteri returns to the trembling augmented melodic line with renewed, eerie piety, celebrating the Lamb of God’s sacrifice. The final Qui sedes in G opens with a poignant “Miserere nobis” of declamatory power, a cappella, the orchestra’s interjecting fanfare figures. The procession to Calvary assumes cosmic grandeur, especially as Carteri intones a soaring “Amen” that modulates into the resigned bliss of B Minor and G Major, respectively. Carteri’s stunning Amen on D, surrounding by glowing soft chords, leaves us rapt in valediction.
As a filler of some consequence, we hear Francis Poulenc and Georges Auric on two pianos from 1 August 1937 in music by the ultimate Gallic iconoclast, Erik Satie. The opening Prelude from Parade has the designation “Prestigitateur Chinois” to indicate its mock-oriental ethos. The second excerpt, Petite fille americaine is marked “Rag Time” and exudes a glossy ironic surface that touches upon Joplin and American minstrel tradition. Acrobates combines ostinato patterns with colorful aspects of etude figuration, the meters shifting into alternately languorous or exotic textures. The Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear, first revealed to me by the partners Casadesus, have two episodes of jaunty, nostalgic or animated disposition, wistful and mocking, as per expectation.
—Gary Lemco
1933 Les chefs proscrits – Ernst Viebig, Conductor – Forgotten Records
A fine conductor, unfortunately suppressed by the vicious political climate of the ’30s
