Élégie (1959)

The Élégie was written for the American two-piano partners Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale - affectionately known to Poulenc as “les boys” - and dedicated to the memory of their mutual friend Marie-Blanche de Polignac. In comparison with the sombre Élégie for horn and piano composed two years earlier in memory of Dennis Brain, the two-piano Élégie might seem an unduly relaxed tribute to such a loved and admired friend as Marie-Blanche. Poulenc himself described it as “very Chabrier” and, in a note in the score, advised his performers to play it “as if improvising, a cigar between the lips and a glass of cognac on the piano.” Even so, as one piano apparently so lazily echoes the other, chord by chord, the piece develops an achingly nostalgic melody, a harmonic intesity such as to crush the cigar and, at the end, a sonority fit to shatter the brandy glass.