Francis Poulenc - Le bal masqué [With score]

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-Composer: Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (7 January 1899 - 30 January 1963)
-Text: Max Jacob (2 July 1876 - 5 March 1944)
-Conductor: Antonio Plotino
-Performers: Nicolas Rivenq (Baritone), Alberto Negroni (Oboe), Giampiero Sobrino (Clarinet), Rino Vernizzi (Bassoon), Francesco Tamiati (Piston), Enrico Calini (Percussion), Massimiliano Damerini (Piano), Giulio Plotino (Violin), Alfredo Persichilli (Cello)
Le bal masqué, Cantate profane sur des poèmes de Max Jacob pour baryton et orchestre de chambre, FP 60 (1932)
00:00 - I. Prèambule et air de bravoure
03:47 - II. Intermède
06:11 - III. Malvina
08:06 - IV. Bagatelle
10:13 - V. La dame aveugle
12:58 - VI. Finale
Francis Poulenc was introduced at an early age into the Parisian cultural circles in which prominent figures like Cocteau and Satie moved, and his early compositions (that is, those that came before his religious awakening in the mid-1930s) reflect the decidedly effervescent aesthetic values that Poulenc and the other members of "Les Six," in response to the emotional viscosity and heavy handedness of the Austro-German musical establishment, came to represent. Among Poulenc's contributions to this early Parisian style was an approach to musical development and continuity that neither developed or continued: themes didn't grow out of each other organically, they appeared pell-mell, piled on top of each other, strung along with carnivalesque variety; harmonic progressions bypassed modulation in favor of bootlegger turns and chromatic acrobatics. Fittingly, Poulenc was very fond of the surreal, shape-changing images and incongruous plots that filled the poems of Max Jacob (1876 - 1944), and set many of them to music. Among these are the four poems appearing in Poulenc's "Profane Cantata," Le Bal Masqué (The Masked Ball).
The work came as the result of a commission from the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Noailles to compose a work for a 1932 concert at the Théâtre de Hyères. The poems, taken from Jacob's 1921 anthology, Laboratoire central, held for Poulenc a kind of odd Bradbury-esque nostalgia, and many of Jacob's images evoked faint fragments of memories. The song cycle reaches our ears, too, as a grab bag of unsorted, mismatched textual and musical remembrances. Poulenc's score calls for a solo baritone (or mezzo), oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, piano, violin, cello, and percussion. This ensemble offers a broad timbral array, which allows the composer to be as playful with register and orchestration as he is with melody and harmony. His menagerie of melodies is passed from instrument to instrument, treating his clever lines with skillfully idiomatic charm and humor.
The cycle is structured in such a way that the four songs are separated by instrumental passages -- either autonomous movements, such as the Interlude between the first and second songs, and the Bagatelle that separates the third and fourth; or extended instrumental prefaces, such as the Caprice that precedes the Finale, or, for that matter, the long introduction to the first song. The Preamble begins with an infectiously peppy romp, bringing to mind the Darwinian cocktail party from Milhaud's Création du Monde. The baritone enters, singing of a mysterious Madame la Dauphine, Chinese Peasants, and cannons made of goose fat. The most readily identifiable connections between this strange collection of observations are phonetic ones, which Poulenc makes abundantly clear through incessant repetition (Madame la Dauphine-fine-fine-fine-fine.... a peasant from Chine-chine-chine-chine... you get the idea). Elsewhere, the text is treated even more clownishly. A maudlin thirty-second note run introduces the overly-rhapsodic benediction that closes "Malvina." Worse yet, the closing lines of the last poem in the cycle -- the singer, following the composer's instructions "très violent" and "exagérément articulé," tries to achieve an ever-climactic conclusion, repeating the last words an inexcusable number of times; and just when we think he might be finished, he leaps saucily into his falsetto range for a delightfully ridiculous finish.
Poulenc eventually sobered up a bit, and in his middle years he composed a large body of rather reverent sacred works. Still, pieces like the "Laudamus Te" from the Gloria, and the finale of his swansong, the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, demonstrate the youthful and invigorating wit of his earlier works.
[allmusic.com]