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Produced by William M Robson


Francis Poulenc - Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani 

In the 250 years since the death of Handel, the Organ Concerto of Francis Poulenc is the only work of its kind which has established a place in the standard concert repertoire. This is an extraordinary situation in itself, and it becomes even more extraordinary on closer inspection, for this was an uncharacteristic work composed for an unexpected medium by the most unlikely composer.... 

Born into a wealthy family, Poulenc enjoyed comfortable private means all his life, and never had to work for a living. His natural talent was evident at an early age, and private lessons in piano and composition were sufficient to confirm his vocation as a composer; he was almost unique among successful French composers in having no formal Conservatoire training - a deficiency which the more academically-minded members of the musical establishment were never able to accept. The premiere of the ballet Les Biches in 1924 confirmed his reputation as the "naughty boy" of French music; with its brittle sonorities, infectious high spirits, and kitsch sentimentality, this effervescent score perfectly encapsulates the spirit of Paris in the Twenties. This early manner was summed up in the Concerto for Two Pianos of 1932, with its breathless fragments of melody tossed around between soloists and orchestra, magical gamelan effects, and pastiche Mozartian slow movement. The Organ Concerto - "grave and austere, and showing a very new trend" - was Poulenc's next major concert work. The flourishing liturgical organ tradition has always been one of the glories of French music, and from the mid 19th century the rigorous training of the Paris Conservatoire produced a succession of great organists and composers to serve the great churches and cathedrals. It therefore seems ironic that such a work should have been written by a French composer with no academic training who knew nothing about the organ... 

However, there was also a flourishing secular organ culture in France. The organ-building firm of Cavaillé-Coll, who supplied instruments to churches throughout the country, also built many organs for private customers - the largest being a cathedral-size instrument for the fabulously wealthy Baron Albert de l'Espée, an eccentric aristocrat condemned to solitude by a morbid fear of germs, who used to spend hours alone, immersed in the music of Wagner, in the cavernous organ-hall of the Chateau d'Ilbarritz on the rocky Atlantic coast near Biarritz. Smaller organs were installed in the fashionable salons of Paris, where Cavaillé-Coll's most influential customers were Pauline Viardot (lover of Turgenev and patron of Berlioz, Massenet and Fauré) and the Princesse Edmond de Polignac ("Winnie" to her friends). Winnaretta Singer was an enthusiastic painter, pianist and organist with a passion for the arts. Heiress of the Singer sewing-machine fortune, she had left her native America and settled in France, where she married into the French aristocracy, and devoted her life to artistic patronage; among those who benefitted from her friendship were Diaghilev, Fauré, Chabrier, Satie, Ravel, Falla, Igor Markevitch, and Stravinsky. In these fashionable circles Poulenc was completely at home; it was the Princesse de Polignac who commissioned his Organ Concerto, and it was in her salon that it was played for the first time, on 16th December 1938, before an invited audience, with Maurice Duruflé at the organ and Nadia Boulanger conducting. 

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