Exploring Francis Poulenc's Clarinet Sonata with Stuart King

Urbane, witty, tragic, spiky and lyrical! Just a few words that give a flavour of the artistry of Francis Poulenc. Singled out as part of a gaggle of artistic friends that hung out in a bookshop on la rive gauche in the 1920s, Les Six, was a master of mélodies whether in Art Song or instrumentally. The death of parents pushed him towards a series of father figure composers and musicians; Ricardo Viñes, Erik Satie, Georges Auric and Igor Stravinsky. 

Scarcely 19 when he wrote his first published works, that included the quirky Sonata for two clarinets with it's innovative use of bitonality and unusual scoring of one clarinet in B flat and one in A. This work dates from the same time as Stravinsky's Three Pieces for solo clarinet that I explored in my last podcast. Whether each composer was aware of the other's work at this precise time is not known, but is no less interesting for that. 

Like so many other distinguished composers, Poulenc returned to the clarinet at the end of his life. Mozart, Brahms, Schumann all wrote pieces in the last years of their composing life. Poulenc embarked upon a series of Sonatas for wind instruments of which the Clarinet Sonata is the penultimate one. It is full of searingly beautiful melodies; pain, anguish, sorrow and vitality that were all features of this fascinating composers oeuvres. 

Join me as I take a dip in the pool of Francis Poulenc's Sonata for Clarinet.