CONCERT SOCIETY TRIESTE
Monday 6 MAY 2024
“WELCOME BACK, MONSIEUR POULENC!”
An evening in memory of the bond between the Trieste association and the brilliant French composer
sixty-one years after his death
TO REVIVE THE NOTES OF HIS MUSIC
THE PIANIST AND COMPOSER ORAZIO SCIORTINO WITH
THE SOLOISTS OF THE SCALA THEATER
TRIESTE – “Welcome back, Monsieur Poulenc!” is the title of the event on Monday 6 May, organized by the Società dei Concerti Trieste which dedicates, at the Teatro Verdi at 8.30 pm, a special evening to the composer and musician Francis Poulenc and to the particular bond that unites this artist with Trieste and the historic Trieste association, a reality that he was able to fruitfully cultivate, and more Today develops important relationships with contemporary composers.
To run the program dedicated entirely to the music of Poulenc, which features some of the most captivating pieces of his chamber production for winds and piano, will be Orazio Sciortino, pianist and composer, one of the most brilliant contemporary musical talents, and the Soloists of the Teatro alla Scala, a group born from an idea by Riccardo Muti, in which Land first solo parts of the Teatro alla Scala orchestra and the Filarmonica of the same name combine in various declinations depending on the proposed repertoire. Like every event on the programme, at 7.15pm, the musicians will hold a meeting at the Ridotto del Verdi to talk about and explain the evening’s concert together with the artistic director, Maestro Marco Seco.
The Società dei Concerti Trieste hosted this eccentric and brilliant protagonist of music twice. Already nn 1940 Poulenc was invited to the 18th season in Trieste and on that occasion andthe tenor Pierre Bernac accompanied him on the piano in an almost entirely French repertoire, also playing music of his own composition for the occasion. An appointment that already makes us understand the far-sighted look and attention that the SdC of Trieste had (and will always have) for contemporary authors as it did for Poulenc but also Hindemith, Ghedini and many others.
The event that then tied him even more to the city of Trieste it was the representation, in 1957, Of “Les dialogues des carmélites” (The dialogues of the Carmelite nuns), certainly the most ambitious and complex dramatic work if not the most original of the Parisian musician. Un appointment mediated by Maestro Raffaello de Banfield already on the board of directors of the Società dei Concerti, the intermediary between the Parisian musician, of whom he was a friend, and the Verdi Theater which hosted him.
Poulenc then returned to the Concert Society in 1962 – welcomed among other things triumphantly by the crowd upon his arrival at the Trieste station – when he accompanied the soprano Denise Duval, his muse, on the piano in an exclusively French repertoire and with the first performance for Trieste (albeit in a concert version) of his “La voix humaine”, based on a text by Cocteau, which was performed subsequently, just in 1968, six years after the premiere for the Società dei Concerti, in Trieste at the Teatro Verdi in the stage form with orchestra.
Another presence of Poulenc in Trieste is linked to his participation, again in 1962, a year before his death, in the international jury of a major international competition, the “Città di Trieste” composition prize.
Poulenc, apparently relaxed and light, he was a complex person, and although he tried to give a different image of himself, he was aware of his own contradictions, prey to long depressions that the official mask did not always shield. Sixty-one years after his sudden death (1963, due to heart failure), his art stands the test of time. A jagged musical path that gave life to what Cocteau defined as “a music devoid of impressionist clouds and romantic turgidities, light and lively, biting but not too much, alien to academic forms, attentive to cubist and surrealist perspectives”.
Always the target of every avant-garde for not adhering to any spirit of research (except, and always with suspicion of the game, in his early youth), Poulenc cannot be totally attributable even to neoclassicism, in which his friendship with Cocteau and Stravinsky places him and the Group of Six of which he was a member.
The concert organized by SdC on Monday 6 May retraces some stages of his discontinuous path and focuses on chamber music for winds and piano allowing us to review the image we have of Poulenc and his music. In fact, being the youngest representative of a generation of artists, he often found himself faced with the death of dear friends or admired composers, and despite the depression that struck him, the last years of his life were rich in high quality production, linked above all to the chamber music sector.
Just quickly scroll through the emotional clarifications that accompany the canonical indications of the individual movements of each sonata scheduled for the Concert Society on Monday 6 May to grasp at first sight a useful code to understand the author in what was the period: “melancholic”, “sadly”, “deploration”, but also “playful”, “divertissement” alongside the usual “allegro”, “soon” , “very soon” sometimes associated with oxymorons. For example, an “Allegro malinconico” opens the first Sonata on the programme, the one for flute, its most famous page, dedicated to the memory of the American patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Myselfnot known, but worthy of being known, the Clarinet sonatas And for oboe (1962), the latter with its surprising conclusion in a heartfelt one deplorationin the death of Honegger and Prokofiev and the shortest Elegies (1957), for horn and piano, in memory of the great Dennis Brain. The composition of the group dates back to his youth Trio for oboe, bassoon and pianoconsidered Poulenc’s first major chamber work, and at the height of his fame he wrote the Sextet, dedicated to the curator of the Louvre, Georges Salles; a piece of fun and enjoyable entertainment, played on rhythm and colour.
To recreate the atmosphere of the 60s in front of the Teatro Verdi in Trieste there will be an exhibition of vintage cars from those years to welcome spectators outside the entrance of the theatre, created in collaboration with the Club 20 at the time of Trieste.
Tickets for all shows of the season and exhibitions can be purchased online on Vivaticket, at the SdC headquarters or one hour before the start of the show at its venue and during the opening hours of the Teatro Verdi ticket office.
About www.societadeiconcerti.it tel. +39 040 362408, [email protected]
The 2023-2024 Season of the SDC Trieste, which is the founder of the AMUR Committee and a member of AIAM, is carried out with the contribution of the Ministry of Culture and the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, the patronage of the Municipality of Trieste, with the support of the Beneficial Foundation Kathleen Foreman Casali, Main Sponsor Caffè Sacher Trieste and Artbonus Patrons, the contribution of all the Members and with the partnership of the Teatro Lirico G. Verdi Foundation.
Press release
