(++++) FORMS OF COLLABORATION

Poulenc: Concerto in D minor for Two Pianos and Orchestra; Aubade—Concerto for Piano and 18 Instruments; 3 Mouvements perpétuels; Nocturne in C; Suite française; Satie: Descriptions automatiques; Gymnopédie No. 1; Sarabande No. 2; Gnossienne No. 3; Avant-dernières pensées; Croquis et agaceries d’un gros bonhomme en bois. Francis Poulenc, piano; Jacques Février, piano; Orchestre National de la RTF conducted by Georges Prêtre; Orchestre des concerts Straram conducted by Walther Straram. SOMM. $18.99. 

Joel Puckett: There Was a Child Went Forth; Trumpet Concerto; Short Stories. Nicholas Phan, tenor; Sean Jones, trumpet; London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joseph Young. AVIE. $19.99. 

     Although Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) is known nowadays only as a composer, he was a fine pianist, giving performances not only of his own music but also of works by other composers. Thanks to Lani Spahr’s exceptionally well-done restoration of some very old monophonic recordings, some of Poulenc’s pianism is now available on the SOMM label – along with the composer’s insights into his own compositions and some of those by Erik Satie (1866-1925). The CD is a collaborative effort of sorts between Spahr and Poulenc, and it is also collaborative in the specific performances offered: the Concerto in D minor for Two Pianos and Orchestra received its première in 1932 with Poulenc and Jacques Février as soloists, and the 1962 recording heard here features the same pianists; and the recording of Aubade—Concerto for Piano and 18 Instruments, which dates all the way back to 1930, is a collaboration with conductor Walther Straram (1876-1933) and is Poulenc’s only recording of this work. The historic bona fides of these performances are quite clear, but they would be only mildly meaningful if they did not shed considerable light on the music. But they do: Poulenc certainly knew how he wanted his piano-and-orchestra works to sound, and had enough skill at the keyboard to ensure that they came across as he wished. Both concertos have a kind of neoclassical gloss. The D minor is bright and colorful in its outer movements and surprisingly lyrical and expressive in its central Larghetto. The rhythms are clearly delineated in Aubade – which Poulenc originally conceived as a ballet, to a scenario of his own design. The “18 instruments” designation is a trifle complicated: there are two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, one trumpet, two violas, two cellos, two basses, and timpani; hence 18 musicians. But one oboe doubles English horn, and the score calls for three timpani, so there are actually 21 instruments. Be that as it may, the clarity of this performance, although scarcely at the level of the reading of the two-piano concerto, clearly shows Poulenc’s skill at using the modest complement of the ensemble to full advantage, and everything is played with verve and spirit – as is also the case in the D minor two-piano work. Placed between the two concertos on this top-notch disc are solo-piano works recorded in 1950. Poulenc, unsurprisingly, does an exemplary job with his own 3 Mouvements perpétuels and Nocturne in C, and the seven-movement Suite française has never sounded more engaging than it does here, with quicksilver mood changes, firm rhythms and a delightful mixture of expressiveness with piquancy. Poulenc also takes the full measure of the very different – yet clearly, in their own way, related – Satie miniatures, which Poulenc treats as a series of little worlds that are fully formed but retain quizzical elements worthy of careful exploration. Gymnopédie No. 1 has never sounded better: tempo and balance are perfectly aligned. Sarabande No. 2 and Gnossienne No. 3 are also perfectly poised and gently communicative. And the three very short three-movement suites are all an excellent mixture of thoughtfulness with lighthearted exuberance, with their wit and ebullience served up in equal measure. The Satie performances, in fact, are so well-attuned to Satie’s conceptual oddities that they feel like yet another collaborative element of this first-rate recording. 

     The collaboration on a new AVIE disc featuring music of Joel Puckett (born 1977) is on a different level: two of the three works were written for the performers who offer them on this CD. There Was a Child Went Forth (2023) is a four-song cycle for tenor and chamber orchestra, to words by Walt Whitman; it was written for Nicholas Phan. The title song is first in the group, followed by The early lilacs, And his parents, and The village on the highland. The song settings are refreshingly straightforward, the words arranged and emphasized to communicate their meaning to listeners rather than to demonstrate the singer’s capabilities at verbal gymnastics. Whitman’s poetry works well in this approach, and the orchestral accompaniment is nicely designed to highlight elements of the poetry without overwhelming the voice or subsuming the meaning into an overabundant sonic environment. Some of the material is, however, rather overdone – such as the opening of the second song – and steps a bit too enthusiastically into almost-pop-music territory. It is in the third and most inward-looking of the songs, which starts with a finely honed orchestral introduction, that Puckett communicates most clearly, although here the falsetto range for some of the words is less than entirely effective. Phan is fully comfortable with the varied elements of these settings and the vocal techniques required – his unaccompanied opening of the fourth song comes across especially well – and he presents the cycle as engagingly as possible. And Joseph Young is suitably engaged and sensitive in leading the accompaniment. The work is, however, more intermittently than totally engaging, stretched a bit thin in some of its searches for meaningfulness. The Trumpet Concerto (2024) is actually Puckett’s second, and was written for jazz trumpeter Sean Jones. It does not slip immediately into imitative-of-jazz mode, however: the slow opening movement, with a dissonant-sound-cloud feeling from which the trumpet emerges only gradually, is more beholden to modernistic compositional techniques than to the blues. Jones’ extended solo through the movement’s midsection certainly displays his improvisational technique to good effect. The second movement is intriguingly marked Simple, like remembering an old song, and this heart of the concerto is affecting and features some well-highlighted instrumental touches from the orchestra; once again, Young shows his sensitivity to Puckett’s vision. The work’s fourth and last movement is a technical showcase for Jones and is in a significantly slower tempo than usual for a finale. Jones’ remarkable abilities are certainly impressive: the way he extracts barely-trumpet-like sounds from his instrument will certainly please devotees of contemporary works that seek to extend instruments’ aural worlds. Apart from the auditory gymnastics of the soloist, though, the concerto is not especially appealing: it is an effective showpiece for Jones but a bit of a drag for an audience interested in melody, harmony and pacing variety. The most-successful work on this CD is the only one not written for the performers heard here. It is Short Stories, a 2013 concerto for string quartet and orchestra, with the solo quartet including violinists Benjamin Marquise Gilmore and Julián Gil Rodriguez, violist Gillianne Haddow, and cellist David Cohen. Written in eight brief movements, Short Stories blossoms from the start with a full-throated orchestral sound that contrasts very well with that of the solo quartet, which is called on sometimes to play as a group and sometimes as individuals. These soloists are themselves members of the London Symphony Orchestra, and clearly they and their fellow musicians are fully comfortable with each other’s complementary roles as well as with their individual parts. Short Stories is subdivided into three parts, the first and third having three movements while the second has two. This superstructure gives the work an arrangement more or less reflective of that of a traditional three-movement concerto, progressing from a generally dramatic and expansive opening part to a quieter and more-delicate central one (whose two solo-instrument-focused movements, Recitative and Mother and Child, are elegantly expressive), and then to a strongly accented and intense conclusion. There are no words in these “stories,” but their ups and downs, their comings and goings, their difficulties and resolutions, come through with greater clarity and power than Puckett brings to the tenor-led cycle heard elsewhere on this disc. Of the pieces here, Short Stories is the work most likely to appeal to listeners not only on an initial hearing but also on subsequent ones. The disc as a whole is a (+++) offering, but Short Stories is a (++++) work that demonstrates convincingly just how communicative Puckett can be in some of his compositions, if not in all of them.