Poulenc: Flute Sonata, Op. 164

To mark the 50th anniversary of Francis Poulenc’s death (1899-1963), Pentaèdre offers a wide range of chamber music by this famous French composer.

Pentaèdre is composed of five musicians whose talent, technique, and precision are renowned. Flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon each provide their very specific colour to create a rich, unique, and homogeneous sonority that is the ensemble’s distinctive trademark. Canadian pianist David Jalbert joins the group for the works with piano.

‘Les Six’ (so named in 1920 by critic Henri Collet) hit the classical music scene with almost the same outrageous force with which the punk movement slammed into popular music in the 1970s and early ’80s. It consisted of a group of six composers working in France: Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Germaine Tailleferre and Louis Durey. Their music was largely a reaction against Impressionism and Wagnerism and incorporated the ideas of Satie and Cocteau with the popular styles of the time: French vaudeville, American jazz and café music. The result was a simple blend of sound with more than a dash of whimsical humour, parody and irony. ‘Les Six’ only formally existed across 1920/21 and its members collaborated in two ventures, the wonderfully surreal divertissement of Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel of 1921 and the miniature Album des Six for piano (1920) featured on this recording.

The popular highlight here is Poulenc’s Sonata of 1957, which is now standard repertoire for flautists.

‘Juliette Hurel performs them with technical assurance and a fine sense of style, in which sparing use of vibrato is only one of the positive elements.’ Gramophone

‘Transparency, light, colours, tenderness, melancholy: all these come to mind when I try to pin down what I mean by “French impressions”. With its gentle, rich, sensuous and vivid sound, the flute is for me the perfect instrument for this repertoire. I have long wanted to record the works assembled here in the company of my dear friends. I am delighted to present them to you now.’ Juliette Hurel

For her third recording on Zig-Zag Territoires, Juliette Hurel offers us a journey through the French masterpieces for flute of the first half of the twentieth century, including Poulenc’s Flute Sonata, Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Syrinx, and Fauré’s Sicilienne and Berceuse.

Reinecke's work is a musical re-telling of the well-known story of Undine, the water spirit who marries a knight, but is betrayed and takes her revenge on him. Frank Martin's virtuosic Ballade (1939) features an acrobatic flute cadenza, roaming melismas and irrepressible cascades, generating a compelling sense of drama. In 1945, while in exile during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Martinu composed his Flute Sonata, in which the virtues of his distinct musical language are plain to hear - lyrical lines, a rhythmic drive which is both energetic and lively and an effective use of tone colour. Six years later the bird-lover Messiaen composed Le merle noir, constructed around the song of the blackbird, which he painstakingly noted down and then found the means to imitate on the flute. Poulenc's melodic Sonata, finally, has become a signature work for its composer: its lightness, transparency and sonic refinement have charmed audiences ever since the first performance.

Music in the Round is Britain’s leading chamber music promoter outside London. Based in Sheffield, it began in 1984 as a two week long festival in its ‘in the round’ home of the Sheffield Theatres Studio. The Festival is still running along with Autumn and Spring series, a large and expanding education and community programme Music in the Community, a national touring programme, series across South Yorkshire and resident group Ensemble 360. Ensemble 360 has gained an enviable reputation across the UK not only for the quality and integrity of their playing, but also for their ability to communicate the music to a range of different audiences. Formed in 2005, as eleven musicians of international standing came together to take up residency in Sheffield with Music in the Round establishing a versatile group comprising five string players, five wind players and a pianist.

“Music in the Round has revolutionised the way people listen to music” Sean Rafferty - In Tune, BBC Radio 3

This SACD presents main works of the repertoire for flute and piano from the 20th century. Regarding the history of the flute, this period is of particular interest since the flute underwent a remarkable revival as a solo instrument during this time.

The sonatas by Henri Dutilleux and Francis Poulenc represent the impulse for this development, which originated in France. In his series of sonatas for every melodic instrument, accompanied by piano, Paul Hindemith began with the flute. Frank Martin, the mediator between the German and French traditions, created a colourfully eloquent variant of the sonata form with his 'Ballad'. The sonata written by the American composer Robert Muczynski became the most famous example of his classicist, brilliant style.

Anne-Cathérine Heinzmann is one of the most renowned German flautists of her generation. She regularly performs as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician in Germany and across the globe. She is co-principal flute of the Opern- und Museumsorchester Frankfurt am Main; in addition, since October 2009 she has been Professor of Music at the Hochschule für Musik in Nuremberg.