Sonata for flute and piano (Poulenc)

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The sonata for flute and piano , completed in 1957, is the first of three sonatas for various wind instruments (one for clarinet and one for oboe ) that the French composer Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) created in the last years of his life. It is dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge , but written for the flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal .

Origin, premiere and reception

Francis Poulenc had been planning to compose a sonata for flute and piano since the early 1950s ; several letters from 1952 onwards suggest that there were also first drafts. In April 1956 the Coolidge Foundation offered him the commission for a chamber music work dedicated to the memory of the patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge . Poulenc initially refused, referring to the completion of his opera Dialogues des Carmélites and its premiere scheduled for early 1957. Poulenc responded positively to another request from the Coolidge Foundation in August 1956 and proposed a sonata for flute and piano. The Coolidge Foundation's offer was $ 750 and the condition that the original manuscript be given to the Library of Congress . For his part, Poulenc stipulated that he would not be allowed to premiere the work in the USA but at the Strasbourg Festival . In his memoirs, Jean-Pierre Rampal tells of a telephone call from Poulenc in early 1957: “Didn't you always want me to write you a sonata for flute and piano, Jean-Pierre? All right, I'll do it. But the best thing is that the Americans want to buy it from me! [...] "

Poulenc wrote the first two movements of the sonata between December 1956 and March 1957 in Cannes . He was in lively exchange with Rampal, who initially wrote of a “hodgepodge consisting of parts and pieces that did not resemble a sonata in anything”. According to Rampal, the joint work on consolidating the plant took place in Poulenc's Paris apartment. On June 7, 1957, Poulenc sent the manuscript of the now completed three-movement sonata to the Library of Congress. 11 days later, on June 18, 1957 (Rampal wrongly names the year 1958), Poulenc and Rampal premiered the flute sonata together at the Strasbourg Festival. There was an unofficial premiere the day before with the - enthusiastically responding - only listener Arthur Rubinstein , who wanted to hear the work but had to leave early. At the request of the audience, the middle movement had to be repeated at the premiere. The reviews were unanimously positive. So it was said in Le Figaro : “a large melodic rainbow, on a bluish background of beautiful harmonies; when I write this I first think of the cantilène of the sonata, an ethereal, magical side of music with a very peculiar élan. "

The American premiere of Poulenc's flute sonata in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC on February 14, 1958 with Rampal and the pianist Robert Veyron-Lacroix , was a great success. As a result, Poulenc's flute sonata became one of the composer's most popular works and at the same time part of the standard flutist repertoire. In 1973 the English composer Lennox Berkeley created an orchestral version.

characterization

The playing time of the three-movement sonata for flute and piano by Francis Poulenc is about 11 to 13 minutes. Their sentence names are:

  1. Allegro malinconico
  2. Cantilena
  3. Presto giocoso

The first movement deals with a melancholy main theme and a cheerful counter-theme in a free, three-part form. The vocal second movement (tempo Assez lent ) is reminiscent of the music intended for the opera character Constance in the Dialogues des Carmélites, which was written shortly before . A predominantly cheerful, virtuoso movement, into which a reminiscence of the melancholy first movement is faded in towards the end of Subito piu lento , closes the sonata effectively.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean-Pierre Rampal : Memories . Atlantis, Zurich / Mainz, 1989. ISBN 3-254-00197-4 , p. 145
  2. ^ Jean-Pierre Rampal : Memories . Atlantis, Zurich / Mainz, 1989. ISBN 3-254-00197-4 , pp. 146/147
  3. ^ Jean-Pierre Rampal: Memories . Atlantis, Zurich / Mainz, 1989. ISBN 3-254-00197-4 , p. 147
  4. ↑ cit. n. introduction to the work, chamber music guide Villa Musica Rheinland-Pfalz
  5. ^ Information from Music Sales Classical

literature

Web links