Music Review – English Translation

Original: Crítica de música. Trío Poulenc en Fundación Beethoven: "El canto de las maderas"
By Gonzalo Saavedra

The Song of the Woodwinds

The canonical repertoire for a trio of oboe, bassoon, and piano can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But it has a cornerstone: the Trio, written in 1926 by Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), which will turn a hundred next year. That single work is good reason for the founding—in the United States, in 2003—by pianist Irina Kaplan Lande and bassoonist Bryan Young of this ensemble named after the French composer, which today features Aleh Remezau on oboe.

The Poulenc Trio’s appearance in Fundación Beethoven’s International Concert Series, at the Teatro Municipal de Las Condes, began, appropriately, with this great score, dedicated to the Spaniard Manuel de Falla, for whose spirituality—Poulenc himself said—he felt the greatest admiration. The performers gave an excellent account of the traits that appear here and shine throughout the composer’s magnificent output: classical balance—keenly aware of Haydn and Mozart—proportion, clarity, pointed humor, and above all, lyricism. Poulenc loved wind instruments and knew how well they can sing—in this case, the woodwinds of an oboe and a bassoon. In fact, at the same time as the Trio he was drafting a cycle of songs—Chansons gaillardes—a practice he would never abandon.

Next came the “Trio pathétique” (1832) by the Russian Mikhail Glinka, originally for clarinet, bassoon, and piano, which recreates a disappointment in love: “The only way to know love is through the pain it causes,” as the score reads. At that time, Glinka was living in Italy and composing various piano and chamber works on themes from operas by Belliniand Donizetti. The Poulenc Trio captured that romanticism—at times sugary and at others highly expressive—as in the Largo, which contains very tender aria-like solos for each instrument.

Then came “Romance” (from the Suite The Gadfly, 1955) and “A Walk in Moscow” (from the suite to the musical comedy Moscow, Cheryomushki, 1959), both by Shostakovich; and four attractive arrangements by Dietrich Zöllner for the Poulenc Trio of exquisite songs by Poulenc himself: “Le chemin d’amour” (1940), “C’est ainsi que tu es,” “Paganini” (from the cycle Métamorphoses, 1940), and “Toréador” (1918, revised in 1932)—all delivered with carefully judged boldness by the ensemble.

The Poulenc Trio has commissioned several works from contemporary composers, and one of them is Explain Yourself! (2019) by the Vietnamese‑American composer and clarinetist Viet Cuong (1990). The piece alternates with a literal quotation from Aubade (1929)—the “choreographic concerto” for piano and chamber orchestra by Poulenc—and, with jocular intent, becomes a game in which the oboe must produce multiphonics (two notes at the same time), which lends the performance a mischievous air. Its insistent use of the technique does not entirely convince, especially when one considers the use of this extended technique in major works such as Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VII (1969) or Witold Lutosławski’s Double Concerto (1980).

For the finale, a work that closes the circle: in the mid‑19th century the bassoonist Eugène Jancourt and the oboist Charles Triébert composed the Fantasie concertante sur “L’Italienne à Alger,” by Gioachino Rossini—one of the great operas with an abundance of wind writing—which once again showed the enormous cantabile quality—the “song”—of these woodwinds. A success, both for the novelty of the programming and for the quality of the performances.

Translator’s note: In Spanish, “maderas” literally means “woods,” but in orchestral context it refers to the woodwinds(oboe, bassoon, etc.).