Nancy Ambrose King, oboe, Jeffrey Lyman, bassoon, and Martin Katz, piano, perform
Francis Poulenc: Trio (1926) pour piano, hautbois et basson
Published by Wilhelm Hansen, 1926/1954
II. Andante
Compared with Marie de Reiset and Robert Planel, Francis Poulenc was an old man of 27 when he completed this, the most enduringly popular of all the works in the oboe/bassoon/piano catalog. It was first performed on May 2, 1926 at the Salle des Agriculteurs in Paris, with the composer at the piano, Roland Lamorlette, oboe, and Gustave Dherin, bassoon. While many annotators have described the charms of this work over the past 90 or so years, perhaps no one did it better than Henri Hell in 1959, excerpted here in Edward Lockspeiser's 1959 translation:
"A short introduction, grave or wry in mood -- one is never quite sure -- opens the first of the three movements and leads to a wittily written Presto section, brilliantly carried off but not without a show of mock sentimentality. The chaste opening theme of the Andante is first given to the piano. It is presently passed to the wind instruments, the character of the oboe being particularly apt to convey its lyrical purity. The ironic character of the oboe, on the other hand, is artfully brought out in the final swift-moving Rondo, made to race to its goal, amusingly contrived as a sudden and unexpected stop. Something of the spirit of Mozart persists in this youthful, concise work: it is indeed music in which the claims of the mind and the heart are adjusted with surprising skill...Pictorially, one is sometimes reminded of a chase, sometimes of a dialogue. Normally, however, the musical discourse is entrusted to the piano, while the bassoon is relegated to the rôle of a discreet commentator and the oboe is allowed to intensify the more lyrical flights. The very heart of Poulenc is in this adroit little work, written now over thirty years ago."
For more information:
Hell, Henri, trans. Edward Lockspeiser. Francis Poulenc. New York: Grove Press, 1959, p. 33.
Program notes by Jeffrey Lyman.
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Audio Engineer: David Greenspan; Assistant Audio Engineer: Rishi Daftuar
Video Director: Jacques Mersereau; Lighting Designer: Jeff Alder; Camera Operators: Jameson Eisele, Chris Schaublin, Rowan Niemisto, Jeff Alder; Slater: Takumi Ogata
Producers: William King, Nermis Mieses, James Onstott, Eric Rutherford, Yaniv Segal
Audio Editing, Mixing and Mastering: David Greenspan; Video Editing: Rishi Daftuar
Page turner: Julian Bridges
Recorded at the Audio Studio in the Duderstadt Center by the Digital Media Commons, a service of the University of Michigan Library. Glenda Radine, Senior Associate Librarian, Digital Media Commons