Francis Poulenc met poet Guillaume Apollinaire only once, when he was in his teens, but he returned throughout his career to Apollinaire's poetry, which is sometimes meanderingly discursive and sometimes aphoristic. His was the first poetry Poulenc set to music, and the cycle, La bestiaire, written in 1911 when he was 20, was the composer's breakthrough piece. The Apollinaire songs, many of which last about a minute or less, are little marvels of inspiration and inventiveness, demonstrations of intense depth or wit ...
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Francis Poulenc met poet Guillaume Apollinaire only once, when he was in his teens, but he returned throughout his career to Apollinaire's poetry, which is sometimes meanderingly discursive and sometimes aphoristic. His was the first poetry Poulenc set to music, and the cycle, La bestiaire, written in 1911 when he was 20, was the composer's breakthrough piece. The Apollinaire songs, many of which last about a minute or less, are little marvels of inspiration and inventiveness, demonstrations of intense depth or wit enlivened by a remarkably generous lyricism. In the notes for this recording of the composer's complete settings of poems by Apollinaire, pianist Dalton Baldwin, one of the 20th century's premier performers of Poulenc, who worked with the composer and was Gérard Souzay's primary accompanist, offers his ringing endorsement of these performances by baritone Holger Falk and pianist Alessandro Zuppardo, and it's easy to hear why. Neither is French, but you'd never know it based on the idiomatic...
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