Centenary - my idea

Rogé/Poulenc

Centenary - my idea

recordings, concerts - Wigmore Hall 2, some around the country,

all entirely Poulenc concerts? Not entirely, I try to mix a little bit not to have one single composer. Whoever it is I think it is not always so good for the audience. So I mix Debussy or Satie with Poulenc and Debussy, you know…I’m doing in 1999 some complete Poulenc but in festivals or in places where they really want to focus on P only. But if it’s just a regular concert series I prefer to have a little bit more writing than one single composer.

More poulenc than any other single composer? I think so because I did everything.

More genuine than that. My intention back in 82, I just went through some Poulenc’s music. At that time the record companies were much more flexible than they are now. I used to call Ray Minshull my artistic director and say, Look, I feel like doing some Poulenc, what do you think. Why not? One CD and that was the start. It was successful, it got some prizes, the Gramophone award and so on. So I said why not another one? And then really after the second one came the 1999 idea. It was in 85, or 86. It’s nearly there. Why not plan something more serious and little by little we did the complete…But it was not a preconceived idea. It came with the success of the series and with the fact, true, that Poulenc has never been recorded that completely.

Even unpublished ones. I discovered one piece just a month before we did the last volume. We found some Pastoral that was written in Italy. So I recorded that last May. I did all the complete mélodies, which was very important because I think that’s the main topic for Poulenc.

If it has to be mentioned which part is more important, yes, I think it is definitely the mélodies and he himself said I would like to remembered as a mélodiste rather than anything else. But personally I think the whole of his work is important and although there are some minor works in chamber music area for instance I think everything he wrote has some characteristic and some personality…it’s never dull, it’s never… It’s very rare when you do a complete recording of some composer, any composer, that sometimes you find worthwhile You think I’m just doing it because it’s the complete but otherwise I wouldn’t play it. There’s not a single piece of Poulenc I had to think that way, which I think is an achievement.

Yes, of course, but it goes through from 1907 the first piece the Mouvements perpétuels are 1920 and then until 1958 or something, so it’s like Fauré the piano work go throughout his age and it’s normal that a composer has evolution in a different part of his life. I think it’s funny to compare the very first piece, which are the Mouvements Perpétuels, to the last one, although they are different, although the maturity is there but you can still feel Poulenc - the harmonies, the style, the humour, the melancholy. Everything is there from the beginning.

I don’t think he was such a good pianist. He could play the piano very well but he wasn’t a virtuoso. Neither is his music orientated towards showing off the technique. It’s more music made of character and style. Very well written. Sometimes very difficult but not difficult on purpose. He was not trying to achieve some particularly dazzling technical effect. It was more to the style and character of the music.

Oh no, no, no. That’s a good question. I’ve had so many experiences here trying to offer to promoters and trying to do something here in Paris for Poulenc or in France and I had the most amazing answers like…

There’s a big series here in Paris. I know the promoter very well I’ve played for her many, many times. I said look 99 let’s do something and she told me French music forget it I can’t do it, I can’t afford it. That means my hall will be half empty.

French music in general and Poulenc in particular. Poulenc is not popular, Poulenc is regarded as they say in French un petit maître which means a secondary non-important composer with a very bad reputation of being somebody superficial, artificial, gifted but having not really worked hard enough, having had a life which was far too easy, too enjoyable, too …he was part of the haute société, was a very rich man. So all that

Some people, they think it’s suspicious. You should suffer, you should be poor, you should be neglected during your life. So he’s paying for that now. I suppose in fifty years it will be forgotten.

Ravel and Debussy are recognised as great composers. But you mentioned Chabrier. Chabrier is never performed. S-S is also neglected. People like D de S, even Fauré. Fauré’s not popular. He’s respected. But if you put on a Fauré recital.

Poulenc was trying to go in such a different direction away from impressionism and the classical. So he was of course much more attracted to Stravinsky or to Satie or those people who had a new language.

Oh yes, much less.

Yes, it’s true, he got influenced, but who didn’t. Even if you hear Schubert, you can fins some…

Oh yes, but that’s definite quotation, it’s more than just a model. He wanted obviously to pay an homage to Mozart. The funny thing is when the second theme comes, which is entirely Poulenc, it matches perfectly Mozart, which I think is interesting. For me the music is personal. He has of course several influences but you can recognise P after one bar. He has such harmonies and the sense of melody which is so typical of P. Somebody said Il a fait la musique… II a utilisé les harmonies de tout le monde pour faire la musique de personne. I think that’s quite true. It’s true that he took but I think one can say similar things to a great deal of composers, who took a little - it’s not comparable but even Bach, he took from… It’s not the same level but I think Poulenc managed through his gathering of other composers to really build a strong language, which is his own language, his own harmony, his own way of treating the melodies. He cannot be confused with any other composer, which I think is a mark for (…stravinsky…) yes right, sometimes but for a few bars and then immediately you have one bar and yes that’s Poulenc

If Stravinsky: Oh yes, of course, the had a great relationship. I think mutual admiration with respect for each other. Of course Stravinsky was such an important innovateur at that time it was difficult to get away from his influence. But for instance if you think of the Viennese which was also another influence and that P tried for a very shirt time in the thirties in some piano pieces like the Impromptus or the Promenades he really , you could almost confuse with a bit of Schoenberg but it was not his way and it went out very quickly. But he was interested what was going around him, that’s for sure, he was trying to absorb a lot of things

If Stravinsky: that’s a difficult thing to say. If, you can say a lot of things. I think so. He said his first influence was Debussy, his first love when he started piano with his mother. He said that Debussy was the first and he never wrote a single note that could be confused with Debussy, that’s for sure. So it didn’t mean that admiration was for him a sort of duplication of what he was going to write. But I think it was stronger with Stravinsky and of course Stravinsky was closer to what he was dreaming of bringing to the music. Also there are I think more emotions and more sensibility with P than with S. I don’t think that P would ever have said that music cannot transmit any human feelings as S once said - wrongly, I think, if I may say so.

Construction

Yes, it does

He said in a very interesting quotation from P where he said - he’s not talking about himself, he’s talking about French music in general - the French have that ability to hide the structure behind sort of elegance. People think it doesn’t exist but it does and it’s why the Germans dont understand what we are writing because they think we have no construction. But we have, just that we dont want to show it. It’s true for Debussy. Some people could look at D superficially and say what is that there is no construction . Of course there is. But its so hidden its so discreet in a way. The first thing you hear in German music, even the modern one, is that it is constructed before everything. Even a piece by Berg which is thirty seconds you can see… it’s obious. With the French repertoire with Fauré, with Debussy, with Poulenc, it’s not there, it’s not the first thing you respond to. The first thing is either the colour, the harmonies, the melodies, the charm, the sweetness, all those things that come first because it’s more the French spirit, let’s say, they are using more charm, more superficiality

I think that Ravel is more towards the classical form. Debussy was much more towards the absence of form Ravel was a sort of, he was a conservateur, like S-S, less than S-S. But remember that Satie said when Ravel got the Legion d’honneur… I know it’s very naughty to say that about Ravel. But still is shows something that Satie and Poulenc wanted to go against. He was hoping to get the Prix de Rome, he was hoping to get recognition, rather than Debussy who didn’t even care. That shows in the music in the approach to the construction of music. But I try not to put too much scales into composers. That’s what I don’t like in the French approach of them of their own music. This one is higher, this one is lower. I think they should respect. I mean P is regarded as superficial. People only mention L’Embarquement pour Cythère or the Piano. They never mention the choral works or Secheresses, or Figure humaine or even Dialogue des Carmelites which are anything but superficial, anything but light. It seems that those works are not considered as Poulenc. I dont like one more than the other. I just accept P as a total, controversial person. I think the best phrase ever said about P was Claude Rostand who said Poulen, il y’a du moine, il y’a du voyou. That’s it. One side is spiritual, one side is criminal and in the middle it’s Poulenc.

Middle of his life.

Death of his friend and his visit to Rocamadour. There was a mixture of the fac that he was in Rocamadour the place itself is full of spirituality and religion and it struck him there like a revelation. The interesting thing that after he had that revelation he didn’t change anything he remained the same person., with the same extravagance in his personal life and the sort of vie de bohème that he had. It’s interesting to see that the religion didn’t transform him into a monk, into somebody who wouldn’t touch sex or food or anything. He remained the same, except that another side of himself was open. But it didn’t sort of again the opposition, not opposition, the versatility of the person was more astonishing.

It’s still there, especially in his personal life, all the way. In the last, certain cycles of Eluard it’s still maybe less bal-musette but still that kind of humour, legerete buyt without being negative. He was light but without being superficial. That’s what I like with him

They look at it the wrong way. If they compare P with Bruckner or Mahler he is superficial. But again it’s a totally different approach of music. It’s a bit like the French food in a way. It has become much more lighter than it used to be and I think this music is also much lighter than people used to eat or listen to a few years ago. I dont see why being light in music is something totally negative. After all music is made for enjoyment, music is made to bring in a way happiness to people. And I think he did that better than anybody else.

Compare to Francaix

It’s never pedant. Secret

It makes sense. It’s interesting to see how he can be eclectic and at the same time…when you hear the piece it has, unless you really want something totally classical in form, you don’t realise that the piece is made of so many different themes.

I would rather connect him with Touraine, with the Loire Valley, which is typically French, which is supposed to be the heart of France rather than Paris. When one says Parisian we have to refer to another era tha now. Obviously the Paris of the 30s with Cocteau and Picasso and with all those it was such a meling pot of different culture, different new artists. For me its hard to imagine that at that time all those painters writers poets, composers were all working together, producing creations together without having the separation that exists now. There is no connection, as far as I know - I dont live in Paris any more, I was told - there is absolutely no interconnection between different form of art any more. If you read P’s life it’s amazing because you read about all the other artists around at the same time. They were exchanging ideas, they were looking for new languages and they were much more open in their research than they are now. Everybody’s hidden and trying to write something without their neighbour knowing what he’s doing.

P said I am visual before anything else and influence we talk about the influence of other composers but the influence of painters are abovious. It’s very easy to relate it to Matisse or to Dufy - Dufy they are so close to each other. Also Dufy has been neglected in the sense that he has no construction, that he has no… So it’s funny those two creators had the same reaction and they are still popular and they are still loved even if they are not the most expensive or the most collected.

Prokofiev

It’s true that Schubert is not regarded as an innovateur before anything else and probably. Brahms is not considered an innovateur. I dont think being an innovator is the pint. Ravel was not an innovateur either.

It’s Fauré, with Ravel personality, although Fauré didn’t recognise hmself in that work. Jeux d’eau a la villa d’este. Liszt was an innovateur and he’s not regarded as an innovateur At the end of his life

The fact to be innovateur is a difficult concept in a way because I don’t regard that as essential point in the composer.

[You can be an important composer without being an innovateur] Poulenc is a perfect example. But as I said the greatest of all, of course it’s not an example because he’s above anybody else, but it’s Bach. Bach was far back in his time. He was still writing fugues when nobody was writing fugues any more.

That shows that one can influence people without being absolutely, without breaking the rules.

[Will P influence anybody?]

Who can influence anybody these days. The problem is that music even at P’s time is more regarded as something which should be new all the time rather than connected to what has been done before. The attitude of the new composer, I dont know now but I remember when I was at the Conservatoire as a studen the main idea was not to do anything that had been done before and anything that was composed a week before was regarded as old-fashioned. It’s terrible in a way what the result is now what’s left of the last twenty years compositions after rejecting absolutely everything we think music has been based on for 200 years then there is nothing to construct on. When I play Debussy and read all those people like Messiaen and Boulez who refer to Debussy what’s left of that? Debussy has not really created a school after. It was a very short influence and one could have thought that he was such an innovation that a lot of composers could have used this technique but in fact very little did or in the very early years of Messiaen but

The world of tradition was already becoming suspicious and every composer had to be an innovator and I’m quite thankfull to P not to have had that sort of obsession because otherwise he would never have been P. He would have been a sort of bad Stravinsky and a bad Boulez and a bad anything else. But he’s been a good Poulenc because in spite of all the things he ate around him he was not seeking something totally innovative but just seeking to find his own …

[conservatoire] I think so because that would have made him a rebel, how do you say that, somebody who…I’m sure that what they used to teach at that time. Like Debussy they would have made him reject even more what was done before. The conservative school of Paris at that time the teaching was appalling, was so so stiff and remember the first thing P showed to a teacher [Vidal] and when he saw the Rapsodie nègre he said what’s that. Not a single hint of - OK it was a minor work but he could have said well yes there are things in your language why not. The result was go away. So how can you cope with teachers which were so…Fauré never said that to Ravel even when he didn’t understand Jeux d’eau he said bring it back. He obviously heard something different he was amazed. But at that time - I think maybe because of Debussy: the teachers who were trying to hang onto tradition hated Debussy and tried to resist any innovation and that’s the worst thing one can do.

[Encourage composers to be themselves] just be myself, not to be fashionable, that’s what he said.

He was fashionable because he was part of that mouvement, Diaghilev, new people that became a sort of fashion but not in the tradition idea not in the conservative idea of fashion but more more in the sort of innovation.

It’s a mixture of Maurice Chevalir, Mistinguett, later Piaf, Jean Trenet those people who. I think Trenet is a good example. Some of the melodies by Trenet could have been Poulenc - so melodic, natural, inventive, spontaneous without looking ??

[Trace Mistinguett, Trenet] Oh yes, probably, he went so often to the Les Bords de la Marne, which was his favourite place. They had all the ginguettes - Nogent, where disneyland is now, a different atmosphere from bal-musettes. He said very often that it was his favourite place to be. He loved the music, he loved to dance, and he loved to… So it’s obvious that some of this… until the end when he that Improvisation en homage à Edith Piaf. It’s hard to tell whether it’s Poulenc or Edith Piaf. For a long time was searching through the Piaf songs. He must have taken that melody somewhere but a never found it. So it was a Poulenc melody, but it sounds absolutely like des Feuilles mortes, the sort of popular song that you can remember and sing over and simple harmonies but still with that sort of popular sensitivity that’s so difficult to catch and I think that Poulenc was so - that’s was people, the serious people didn’t like because they didn’t want to be involved with Bords de la Marne. There were two categories, there was the serious one the intellectual side and then the sort of vulgar and trivial people and P would mix all that without being racist before the time. He had no barriers

[Gloria] jazz piece. I doesn’t sound like something shocking or out of place, because he knew how to mix different styles and could be absolutely Montmartre and at the same time Bords de la Marne.

[How does he get away with it] the secret was his own personality. I think before being a composer and I think even if he hadn’t been a composer hw would have been that eclectic kind of person, going one day in the morning to the church and in the night to the brothel. For him there was no barrier. He had to be himself and his secret is to be himself all the time, in his music, in his life and since for him it was logical to mix those two cultures, those two different sides, musically his language was made of those two influences. And he was gifted enough to be able to write without us being shocked or distrubed by that mixture. There are very few example of composers who have been able to - now it’s either you do popular music or you do serious stuff but another example of somebody who is able to mix - I know some players, some performers who are able - they are very rare - who are able to touch jazz and classical but composers.

Prokofiev; He was too serious with his work, he was too conscious of being a great composer which P never was. I think that saved him. He never took hmself serously in a way.

[50 years time] another fifty years. P is to be remembered as a composer without trying to I don’t think that if in his life he didn’t put sectional barriers or different levels one shouldn’t look at him with different ears or different eyes, just accept him as he was without trying to say that’s the good P that’s the bad P we should neglect that. Either you accept him as a whole or you dont. I don’t think one can approach P by saying well let’s make a selection and maybe we can find out finally that he’s a great composer. Because if you take away either part, the serious one or the non-serious one you destroy P. He’s made of that opposition and if one is erased there’s a sort of pale photocopy of what he really was

The first contact I had with P and that’s something very significant because it was before any kind of analyses or any kind of even performing the music My mother was an organist. She played the organ, church organ in 1957 with the radio orchestra and I was turning the pages and I was pulling the stops and I was already playing the piano at a littel level and I still remember very clearly that music touched me like I think that’s the first emotional memory I had as a musician. There was no reason. I had heard a lot of music by then. My grandfather was a violinist and I heard music all the time but I can still remember when my mother played that because it was a kind of revelation. I had - that really spoke to my heart and at six years old you dont analyse - it’s something completely instinctive It took me more than 25 years to come back to that music and when I did I really remember that first contact and every time I hear that music and I play that music there is something

I was a little boy, I fell in love, it’s like the first love in your life and even if later you think it was not the right person you still have that memory of a sudden emotion that you never forget and I had that with that music more than 25 years before I played a note by P because at the Conservatoire, of course, it was completely erased. P did not exist and it suddenly came back to me and of course I had that marvellous love affair with P when I was six years old and I forgot about it and so it means that the relation I have with that music is not made of a professional approach or an intellectual approach, It was clearly an instinctive and physical love of that music. That’s why I’m playing it with such natural and such spontaneity because it’s for me - I think if I had been a composer I would to have been P rather somebody much greater.

[Like him] from what I read, the man I prefer is the one from what I play. I’m glad because he said once my music is the best of myself. So I think that what I know from Poulenc through his music, unfortunately I never met him, is what I really like. Maybe if he was indeed there I would be afraid of being disappointed because you never know how the human person can be. I prefer to rely on what he put into his music, knowing that he put what he felt was the best of himself. And I have the feeling I know him, very well. I know it’s based on illusion but I prefer that to - meeting composers has never been my fantasy. Even if I had the magic thing to meet Mozart or Beethoven

It would of course be fascinating as a person but I would never ask him how I should play such a sonata because that’s not the role of the composer. The very few composers I met - I played very vey little - unfortunately I haven’t met a lot of music that is attractive to me but the little I did was always very disappoointing, because composers are so narrow-minded with their work. They look at it like one does at one’s own children. They want it to be that way because they think that is the best but that’s not the way to raise a child or to raise a work you have to let it go.

[P’s recordings] Just for fun but not as an example - so badly played and so out of time. I mean most of the things I have heard was too difficult for him, as when he played the Aubade. I have recording of the Novelettes and it’s dreadful but the conditions were so difficult and I don’t believe that composers are to be interpreters. They have to give their works to others to make them alive. Otherwise if it’s his interpretation and I believe it’s true for any composer, if there is only interpretation, the composer’s one, then why are we there. We do not need to be there. There is only one interpretation so one pianist is enough

all his markings are wrong. Some of them are so crazy that it’s unplayable, physically unplayable. Either his metronome was out of work or he didn’t think. No. I usually trust more what I read throughout the notes. The music means to me how I feel I can transmit the emotions. If I start saying I dont respect the markings, I don’t respect the tempo, what do I respect? I think those are only indications towards to be able to transmit the main thing which is what is behind the notes. So I dont want to be traitor to the composer. I mean if he writes piano I’m not going to play forte. But somehow I can read between the lines. For instance in one piece Mélancolie which is one of my favourite pieces because it’s so typical of Poulenc character and he writes sans rubato, which is totally against the work, which needs flexibility. I know why he wrote that because if I put rubato on a piece that is already appealing for rubato then it’s going to be all over the place and it’s going to be against what I want So I prefer to put no. So that’s why I say you have to read between the lines and understand why he puts sans rubato in a piece that the first thing you say is that it has to be rubato. But if he says that he means be careful, respect the line, respect the style, dont overdo it. But if you play like a metronome it is obviously wrong. When he says jamais a cette pédale?? If you put the pedal down all the way it’s wrong. But what you want it’s the effect of blur of special colours.

Side 2

it has a double meaning in French. Pédale means homosexual, queer. So written by Poulenc its - I ‘m sure he did it on purpose of course.

The songs are a wonderful area a wonderful world of P because he was able to capture the essence of the poem. I have read so many of the poems. I have read all the poems he put in music but so many of them before even playing the piece I’m trying to think if I had to compose something what would I do. Of course, it’s completly utopic I’m not a composer but when finally I played the mélodie I said how amazing it is that music reveals the poem. It really gives another dimension to the poem and when Apollinaire’s wife said you have the same language as Apollinaire, it was the best compliment you could ever say. He was really able to not put his music on top of the poem but just to help the poem to become

The magic of the words, the music of the words and P was so clever for that. I think that if you don’t get the words perfectly well I think the music will help you by getting the sense because it’s such a reflection of the meaning of the poem that it helps a lot -

Eluard and Apollinaire were the two great connections beween the music and the words. But for me it has been a fabulous experience because I have done very little melodies before. I’m doing all the P works, fabulous adventure because apart from maybe three or four they are all masterpieces, short with the character always in one bar everything is said.

[The best of him; self-indulgence] Oh yes all the time. There is a certain charm and he wants to be charming, he wants to charm, but that is not only homesexual want to be charming. I think that he had that sense of humour that saved him from vulgarity and a touch of elegance. I don’t think of him in his music or as a person who is somebody who had never been vulgar, he’s been trivial, gaulois we say in French. Gauloiserie is not vulgar. To some people it can be but to some people it’s a love of life and good things and women or men or wine and everything but enjoy. I think that P enjoyed life immensely. But his main topic was somebody who would have enjoyed anything it is possible for him to enjoy. It was there and he will use it. Everything in music which could be done he would try and even if he was not successful he was always giving the best of himself.

I always wondered what the string quartet was - auric to have him throw it away because that would have been interesting, although he was never at ease with string instruments, still it would have been something

There’s a lot of the Bestiaires of Apollinaire which has disappeared completely and that is a pity.

One can see the limitation of Satie and I have played a lot of Satie and I love Satie but one can see that in comparison to P he could never get away from his - one can see that Satie wanted to be eccentric wanted to be unconventional and never managed to go above that sort of reactionary to the academic writing because he never assimilated both - there was something good in the academic which he could have used but he turned it into a joke and there was something obviously marvellous in the sense of melody and rhythms but one can feel that Satie never really used his gifts.

Yes, but that spoiled him completely. He went to the Schola Cantorum which is even worse. When he got out of it and tried to write fugues he realised it was the last thing everybody wanted to hear. Satie is against the logical. His music has limitations which I think P is much less. He is much more epanoui, out-going personality. Satie was too frustrated to be able to express himself.

I find Chabrier more limited, more into prison of adacemicism, he never really went out of it, although he was trying to be light and humour and using sweet harmonies. In comparing him to P I find him more narrow, not narrow-minded, more one track without the ability of going outside of his own

What P achieved in Dialogue des C is amazing knowing what P was supposed to be. Who would have thought that he would take that Bernanos book and make something out of that.

I think he suffered a lot, the composition took a lot of his energy and but still it’s such a dramatic piece without being overpedantic

He wanted to but he didn’t succeed one can feel even in the last scene that is so dramatic one can still hear P harmony. He is dramatic without being tragic. He could never be tragic. He’s just pudique, distant and it’s even more dramatic because it never becomes, it;s never Lulu. In a way for me it’s even more touching because he sort of suggests things but he never takes you down to the bottom. It’s typical French.

Being light without being superficial, trying to cover everything by charm and words and easiness, which sometimes it masks emptiness but sometimes it also masks don’t want to be too heavy. That’s why P is so French and that’s why French people dont like to recognise him because they dont like the image that he is sending to them. They dont want to be seen as superficial. They want to be seen as serious people. They all want to Brahms or Mahler or Bruckner. It’s very typical and they are not made to be that. They dont want to play their own games and I think that in a way they are not using their qualities because they will never be Brahms. But there could have been more Ps if they had played the game if they had really been just themselves without trying to be somebody else. I am glad he is there to be himself

[Fauré Requiem]