GREAT RECORDINGS phase 11

POULENC: CONCERT CHAMPÊTRE CONCERTO FOR TWO PIANOS
*ORGAN CONCERTO
Aimée van de Wiele, Francis Poulenc
Jacques Février & Maurice Duruflé
Orchestre de la Société des Concerts
du Conservatoire
Pierre Dervaux · *Georges Prêtre

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'First-rate performances of three of Poulenc's keyboard concertos, among the most attractive and revealing of his works. The Concert champêtre is played to perfection, the composer and Jacques Février bring the appropriate verve and attack to the sparkling Concerto for two pianos, and Maurice Duruflé is the excellent soloist in the Organ Concerto.' (Gramophone)

These three delightful and popular works appear here in trail-blazing and definitive recordings. The Concert champêtre (1928) was the first of Poulenc's major works and was written for and inspired by Wanda Landowska, the great Polish-born harpsichordist. It is played here with enormous panache by Landowska's pupil, Aimée van de Wiele.

Poulenc himself and his great friend Jacques Février gave the premiere of the enormously entertaining Concerto for two pianos in 1932, and the composer and organist Maurice Duruflé gave the first performance of the more emotionally-demanding Organ Concerto in 1938.

The recordings, made in Paris in 1957 and 1961, are conducted by two of Poulenc's finest interpreters: Georges Prêtre, who has recorded all of the composer's orchestral music, and Pierre Dervaux, whose recording of Poulenc's operatic masterpiece Dialogues des Carmélites, remains a classic of the gramophone.