Poulenc was a very interesting, somewhat obscure French composer of the early 20th century. He has an incredibly distinct style, with marked influence from Prokofiev, while also incorporating elements of what could be considered a kind of "French tradition" in music, and some pseudo-impressionist tendencies.
An example of a particular facet of his style I find interesting is his habit of incorporating various non-chord tones in the harmonies of his pieces, which can at times seem almost random, but not to an anti-aesthetic end. At any rate, I also find it impressive that he improvised these particular pieces, but do note that that is not to be taken literally - he most likely improvised a rough, simplified version of these pieces and then worked those into what you hear.
Here is Poulenc himself playing 4 of his improvisations.
2 comments:
It's always so interesting to me to hear the composer play his/her own music. Frequently it is quite different from the way most performers play it. Poulenc is a composer I'm not too familiar with. I hear the Prokofiev influence, but I also hear a lot of influence from Debussy.
Yes, that's a well-founded observation; like I said, there are certain "pseudo-impressionist" tendencies, by which I mean that sometimes Poulenc incorporates harmonies and even melodic patterns (for example, anything having anything to do with the whole-tone scale) that could easily have their place in impressionist music (Debussy was one of the very significant impressionist composers), however, this is usually in a context in which chords tend to behave more functionally than they would in impressionist music -- where they are more often determined just by voice leading, and are not intended to create a very strong sense of harmonic "direction" in any way.
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