Concertos for piano

Description

The piano works of Poulenc, great music with offbeat humor. The Quebec pianist Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier are long-time musical partners. They have chosen to interpret here the piano music of Poulenc, joined by Edward Gardner at the head of the BBC Philharmonic. Louis Lortie paints for us a Poulenc very much in the image of his mentor, Eric Satie: playful and melancholic. There is always a certain joy of living, slightly sarcastic, in the piece Aubade, a choreographed concerto, or even a melancholic irony in the explosive Concertos for Two Pianos, both Mozartian and Stravinskian. Or this singular piece Elegie, of which the composer noted that it must be played with a cigar in the mouth and a glass of cognac on the piano! In short, it is a journey into the universe of Poulenc that Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier invite us to, with passion and melancholy, as it should be.