Word: poulenc
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...York Philharmonic-Symphony (Sun. 3 p.m., CBS). French Pianist-Composer Francis Poulenc (see Music) plays his own Concert Champetre...
...taken tall, long-faced Francis Poulenc, 49, a long time to get here ("During the war it was impossible, and before that I was not célèbre"). But he was making up for lost time. Unlike many visiting composers, who felt just as sure of themselves with a baton as with a pen, Poulenc wouldn't be caught dead on a podium. Says he, throwing up his hands: "I have no tempo." Instead, Manhattan audiences saw him first as piano accompanist to Baritone Pierre Bernac in a recital of the songs which, along with his religious...
...Poulenc (he pronounces it heavily almost as Poolonka) likes to describe himself, with a fast, toothy grin, as "both a saint and a devil." Last year, his frothy, obstetrical opera Les Mamelles de Tirésias -in which one character changes sex on stage and another litters the footboards with a good share of his 40,000 babies-created the noisiest scandal in Paris since the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Like the Rite, however, it is still going strong...
...member of a wealthy chemical trust family, Poulenc is one of few French composers who "escaped" the Paris Conservatoire: at entrance age (18), he was in the French army in World War I. He emerged from World War II France's most popular composer, partly because there was no political blemish on him. He holed up on his 17th Century Vouvray estate (where he also makes wine), refused to play for the Germans, and stalled them off on the production of a new ballet, Les Animaux Modèles, by telling them repeatedly: "Ah, it is not yet finished...
Composer Honegger, now 55, had been, 30 years ago, one of the noisiest of the famed French Six (only two others, Milhaud and Poulenc, ever amounted to anything). In those days in Paris, Swiss Composer Honegger had spent as much time talking as composing, and his talk was mainly directed, against the pernicious influence of jazz and the "street fair." He wanted his music to be austere...