‘This had to be the most fun I think I've ever had in a recording: camping it up outrageously as the Marquise de Montonson (or is (s)he?), discovered dressed as a priest in flagrante delicto in the Bois de Boulogne by a Parisian copper (Sam Alexander) and hauled in to be questioned by your Commissaire (yup, that's the plot!). Elsewhere, by contrast, some wonderfully classy singing by Julian and Soraya Mafi alongside the Manchester Camerata under John Andrews. Check it out!’
Sam Alexander (actor)
Soraya Mafi (soprano)
Julien Van Mellaerts (baritone)
Lawrence Zazzo (countertenor)
Manchester Camerata
John Andrews (conductor)
Poulenc the miniaturist par excellence burst into public view, fully-formed in his late teens, emerging flamboyantly into the artistic swirl of 1920s Paris. His fabulously inventive, quirky and colourful approach to writing for chamber ensemble and voice comes vividly to life in this set of early works which capture all of his youthful elegance, wit, and occasionally sardonic humour.
Many of these early masterpieces are now well-known in their incarnations for piano; but his sheer inventiveness and joyful revelry in a kaleidoscopic riot of instrumental colour is celebrated here in the earliest versions of such classics as Le Bestiaire and Cocardes, alongside masterpieces more cruelly treated by his contemporaries, the Quatre Poemes de Max Jacob and Le Gendarme Incompris.
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