Francis Poulenc - Sonata for Oboe and Piano

- Composer: Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (7 January 1899 -- 30 January 1963) - Performers: Maurice Bourgue (oboe), Jacques Février (piano) - Year of recording: 1976 Sonata for Oboe & Piano, FP 185, written in 1962. 00:00 - I. Élégie (Paisiblement) 05:14 - II. Scherzo (Très animé) 09:10 - III. Déploration (Très calme) Poulenc composed his sonata for Oboe and Piano one year before his own death in 1962. - Given the first movement’s title “Élégie,“ it sounds remarkably peaceful. The oboe begins with a four-note phrase starting on its high D, from which both instruments derive and unspool a winding, lyrical theme; the piano brings in a rising theme just as lyrical, before a third theme, in a double-dotted, tripping rhythm, enters. This provokes an unexpectedly thunderous outburst before the pastoral material of the opening returns. - The mercurial emotional turn of the first movement comes back in the second-movement Scherzo, albeit reversed. Here, an A section full of pointed, racing rhythms, contrasted briefly with smoother phrases, brakes at the behest of a few piano chords for a far slower B section with a rhapsodic theme introduced and mostly developed by the piano. - The third movement, titled “Déploration“ and marked Très calme, is the most obviously funerary of the three. After a piano introduction, the oboe takes a lamenting, chorale-like theme over a stolid piano pulse. The pulse quickens and the tripping rhythm from the first movement makes a re-appearance, but the brief moments of solace in the music always feel unstable and fleeting, an impression confirmed by a bleak ending with distant, ghostly piano chords supporting inward lyrical imprecations from the oboe. The oboe’s final sustained note, with dissonant splashes by the piano underneath, seems to hang in the air for long after its sound dies. Francis Poulenc dedicated his Sonata for Oboe and Piano, the last of this three wind sonatas, to the memory of Sergey Prokofiev [“à la mémoire de Serge Prokofieff“].