Milhaud: Le Boeuf sur le toit, La Création du Monde, Poulenc: Les Biches

Listen on Presto Music. Free thirty day trial. Find out more.

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... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 More…

Catalogue No: CHAN9023
Label: Chandos
Length: 68 minutes

Poulenc: Les Biches

Work length20:16

$5.25

$6.50

Yan Pascal Tortelier, Ulster Orchestra

I. Rondeau

Track length3:20

$1.05

$1.30

II. Adagietto

Track length3:57

$1.05

$1.30

III. Rag-Mazurka

Track length6:19

$1.05

$1.30

IV. Andantino

Track length3:12

$1.05

$1.30

V. Final

Track length3:28

$1.05

$1.30

Ibert: Divertissement

Work length15:32

$6.30

$7.80

Yan Pascal Tortelier, Ulster Orchestra

I. Introduction

Track length1:11

$1.05

$1.30

II. Cortège

Track length5:02

$1.05

$1.30

III. Nocturne

Track length2:35

$1.05

$1.30

IV. Valse

Track length3:00

$1.05

$1.30

V. Parade

Track length1:48

$1.05

$1.30

VI. Finale

Track length1:56

$1.05

$1.30

Milhaud: Le Boeuf sur le toit, Op. 58

Work length16:22

Album only

Yan Pascal Tortelier, Ulster Orchestra

Milhaud: La Création du Monde, Op. 81

Work length15:52

$6.30

$7.80

Yan Pascal Tortelier, Ulster Orchestra

Overture. Modéré

Track length3:53

$1.05

$1.30

I. Le chaos avant la création

Track length1:32

$1.05

$1.30

II. La naissance de la flore et de la femme

Track length2:57

$1.05

$1.30

III. La maissance de l'homme et de la femme

Track length1:58

$1.05

$1.30

IV. Le désir

Track length4:02

$1.05

$1.30

V. Le printemps ou l'apaisement

Track length1:30

$1.05

$1.30

Reviews
Explore

Reviews

2010

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.

2011 edition

a splendid, modern, digital version of Ibert's sparklingly witty Divertissement. Verve is combined with much delicacy of detail

Milhaud: Le Boeuf sur le toit, La Création du Monde, Poulenc: Les Biches

Downloads

Contents

Download queue