Suite for violin, clarinet and piano (Op.157b)

Ouverture

Divertissement

Jeu

Introduction et Final

One of the most prolific composers of his generation, Darius Milhaud did not waste time. He was so quick off the mark in arranging a concert suite from the incidental music he had written for Jean Anouilh’s Le Voyageur sans bagages in 1936 that it was actually first performed, at the Concerts de la Sérénade in Paris, several weeks before the play itself went into production at the Théâtre des Mathurins in the same city.

While Milhaud’s music must have been a contributory factor to the success of the play, no one would guess from the material included in the Suite that Anoulh classified Le Voyageur sans bagages - the “traveller without luggage” being man who has lost his memory - among his pièces noires. There is no hint of darkness in the Ouverture, a cheerfully tuneful piece in the popular style still cherished at the time by most of the composers associated with the so-called “Groupe des Six.” True, the Divertissement, a thoughtful conversation first between clarinet and violin and then all three instruments together, is more serious than its title suggests. Jeu, on the other hand, is an unambiguously playful movement for clarinet and violin, Stravinsky giving lively encouragement at the beginning and the end. The one dark episode is the Introduction to the last movement which, however, turns out to be no less bright than the Ouverture and with its apparent allusions to “Lullaby of Broadway” - a song written a year or two earlier - even more popular in style.

Gerald Larner ©2005