Gallic Gift of Small Wonders

Perhaps the main contribution to the art of the 20th Century by the French composers whose wit was inspired by Erik Satie and rhythmic bite by Stravinsky, was their gift of delivering memorable but not necessarily “important” things--musical epigrams--in a small space and with economy of means.

They produced a music that is above all cogent and catchy, exemplified by the determinedly banal, sentimental, occasionally acid scores turned out (although not to the exclusion of “serious” material) by Francis Poulenc throughout a career that began after the First World War and ended with his death in 1963.

In his most characteristic and appealing work, Poulenc gives the impression of utter ease, flicking out his cheeky witticisms at will. Yet he not only worked hard at achieving this seeming spontaneity, but produced some of his most sparkling scores after emerging from the prolonged periods of depression he suffered in his later years.

The Poulenc style is encapsulated in a collection of tidbits created in 1947 as incidental music to a play by Jean Anouilh, “L’invitation au chateau,” which has, remarkably, just been recorded for the first time, part of an inexpensive two-CD Poulenc set from Britain (Cala 1018).

“L’invitation” consists of 19 morsels, totaling not quite 17 minutes: The shortest is 10 seconds, the longest (a sublimely smarmy tango), 2 1/2 minutes. The scoring is for violin, clarinet and piano, with a tiny duet for children’s voices thrown in. It’s rather impractical material for live performance, but ideal for recording. And ideal is what this debut recording is, the fluff delivered with an engaging balance of wit, elegance of tone and sentimentality by clarinetist James Campbell, violinist Peter Carter and pianist John York.

There is lots to love as well in the remainder of the collection, including a fittingly rowdy-weepy performance of the Sextet for Piano and Winds and a wickedly romping Sonata for Two Clarinets (one of Poulenc’s most blatant Stravinsky knock-offs).

Less successful in execution--but hardly contemptible--is the Campbell and York version of the Clarinet Sonata, whose slow movement in particular is rather too languid here. But there’s compensation in one of the non-Poulenc bonuses, an exquisitely polished, dreamy reading of Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro by harpist Ieuan Jones, flutist William Bennett, Campbell and the Allegri String Quartet.

To hear the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano with both its energy and lyric charm fully realized, try a recital called “Capriccio: Mid-Century Music for Clarinet” (Centaur 2201), in which the performers are a pair of Los Angeles Philharmonic stalwarts, clarinetist David Howard and pianist Zita Carno.

Howard’s tone is more varied, his touch lighter than Campbell’s, his rhythm more relaxed, as he and Carno spin out that ineffable slow movement with optimum gracefulness.

The recital also contains Lutoslawski’s Dance Preludes, a collection of snappy, French-style miniatures, dating from relatively early in the composer’s career but already suggesting his rhythmically charged 1980s style; and the young Leonard Bernstein’s Sonata (1942), looking more to France and perhaps (unlikely as the combination may sound) Hindemith than to the jazz elements that were about to invade his music.

And don’t overlook another of those priceless cheapos in the Vox Box series (5102, 2 CDs)--150 minutes of delectable, unhackneyed stuff for around $10--this time devoted to Darius Milhaud, Poulenc’s one major co-conspirator in “Les Six.”

But Milhaud was a gentler--and less sentimental--soul than Poulenc, as witness the “Six Little Symphonies” included here: each in three jewel-like movements, no symphony over seven minutes long, and each scored, “Brandenburg” concerto-like, for a different combination of instruments.

The set further includes “L’homme et son desir” (1918), a loony, Satie-inspired (with little lashings of “Le Sacre du printemps”) evocation of the Brazilian jungle, for voices, exotic percussion, bells, whistles and small orchestra, and a half-dozen additional pieces of varying size and weight.

Most of the performances, originally recorded in the late-’60s, are by the Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg, hardly a luxe ensemble, under the direction of the composer, less a master of the baton than a kid in a toy shop. But the toys are of his own creation and he shares his delight in them with us.*