Francis POULENC (1899-1963)
Secular Choral Music
Chansons françaises (1945-46) [19:11]
Chanson à boire (1922) [3:29]
Sept Chansons (1936) [11:48]
Petites voix (1936) [5:36]
Un soir de neige (1944) [5:41]
Figure humaine (1945) [18:44]
Norddeutscher Figuralchor/Jörg Straube
rec. 30 August 2008, 20-21 March 2009, 27 June 2009, Ehem. Ackerhaus der Abtei
Marienmünster, Germany. SACD
MUSIKPRODUKTION DABRINGHAUS UND GRIMM MDG 947 1595-6 [65:21]
This is a most welcome disc. While one often encounters Poulenc’s sacred choral
music, such as the motets, Gloria, or Stabat Mater, the secular
music appears less frequently on recordings. All of the music on this CD is
a cappella and appears to be the composer’s complete secular works
for unaccompanied chorus. Although the pieces represent Poulenc in more than
a twenty-year span — the earliest from 1922 and the latest from 1945 — there
is an amazing consistency in their quality and maturity. Moreover, there is
a great deal of variety; so one can listen to the disc all the way through
without boredom setting in.
Poulenc’s sense of humor and lightheartedness is brought out best in the first
set of songs, the Chansons françaises, with their colorful use of onomatopoeia:
the “click, clack” of the clogs, or the drunken laughter in the Chanson
à boire. The Chansons françaises hold a place in the repertoire
not dissimilar to that of the folksong settings of Bartók or Janácek. The
composer’s serious side is prevalent in the Figure humaine, which was
originally set as an act of resistance during the time of the German occupation.
This cantata is likely the best known of these works and is certainly one
of his greatest. Poulenc himself considered it one of his best compositions.
Un soir de neige, which Poulenc composed around the same time,
also expresses with its frequent fourths and fifths, the emptiness he must
have felt during this period. Both of these works are based on the poetry
of Paul Eluard, Poulenc’s good friend. For the earlier Sept Chansons,
containing much typical Poulencian harmony, the composer employed some poems
by Eluard and others of Guillaume Apollinaire. His settings of this poetry
are masterly, and one finds it difficult to separate the lyrics from the music.
The Petites voix are the only ones on the CD exclusively sung by female
voices. They were originally set for three children’s voices, but were also
scored for either children’s or women’s choirs.
While none of these works must be easy to sing, they all suit the voice very
well, as one would expect from a composer most renowned for his vocal music.
I am happy to report that the performances by the Norddeutscher Figuralchor,
under the expert direction of Jörg Straube, are superb. The choir has a wonderful
blend and no detectable intonational problems. The only small criticism is
with the diction as recorded here, though the choir expresses the variety
of moods of the texts supremely well. It is fortunate that the booklet contains
the complete texts in the original French with side-by-side English translations,
because I found myself following along in order fully to understand the texts.
The sound itself is open with plenty of bloom on the voices; this also may
affect to some degree the comprehensibility of the texts, however much it
makes for pleasant listening. I do not want to over-emphasize this because
there is so much here that is truly beautiful, and a Francophone may well
be able to understand the words better than I could. French groups, such as
the Accentus Chamber Choir, have recorded some of these pieces, but I have
not had the opportunity to audition them. Overall, though, this disc can be
recommended to anyone who loves Poulenc and/or twentieth-century choral music.
Leslie Wright