Poulenc: Les Biches: Suite

“Here is 1920s French music directed by a conductor who's completely in the spirit of it, and plenty of spirit there is, too. Except for Ibert's Divertissement, this is ballet music. Poulenc's suite from Les biches, written for Diaghilev's ballet company and first heard in Monte Carlo, is fresh and bouncy and stylishly played here, although Chandos's warm recording, good though it's, takes some edge off the trumpet tone; the genial nature of it all makes us forget that it's a unique mix of 18th-century galanterie, Tchaikovskian lilt and Poulenc's own inimitable street-Parisian sophistication and charm. As for Ibert's piece, this is uproariously funny in an unbuttoned way, and the gorgeously vulgar trombone in the Waltz and frantic police whistle in the finale are calculated to make you laugh out loud. Milhaud's Le boeufsur le toit also has Parisian chic and was originally a kind of music-hall piece, composed to a scenario by Cocteau. It was while attending a performance of it in London in 1920 that the composer first heard the American jazz orchestra that, together with a later experience of New Orleans jazzmen playing 'from the darkest corners of the Negro soul' (as he later expressed it), prompted him to compose his masterly ballet La création du monde.
Tortelier and his orchestra understand this strangely powerful music no less than the other pieces. This is a most desirable disc.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“a splendid, modern, digital version of Ibert's sparklingly witty Divertissement. Verve is combined with much delicacy of detail” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition