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Presenter：Stacey Rodda 盧廸思
The Culture Show has been making direct connections between art inspired by music and music inspired by art. Now it’s time for more - unexpected connections...The Culture Show is continuing its look at how the visual arts and music are so connected - sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. We have unearthed a wealth of examples, yet we have so much more to explore. I hope that for those of you who join me for the music – much of which has never been, or is very seldom played on Radio 4 – you will also develop my passion for art. Join me, Stacey Rodda, Sunday nights at 7 pm for The Culture Show.
TWO RARE RECORDINGS AS WE REVISIT POULENC’S WORKS INSPIRED BY ART
In this episode, Poulenc’s Les Biches, a work inspired by a painting by Watteau written for a ballet of the same name. Poulenc’s models were Watteau’s depictions of Louis XIV flirting with various women in his Parc aux biche at Versailles. Diaghilev, realising the potential of this ballet, produced it for the Ballet Russes in 1924.
Poulenc responded with a light-hearted and witty series of dances, neo-classical in style. The ballet does not present a story, but rather situations or the dynamics of certain sexual relationships and is a work that brilliantly evokes its post-war world.
We are going to hear the world première recording of Poulenc’s own piano version of his ‘ballet of atmosphere’ Les Biches, performed by Jean-Pierre Armengaud. Piano scores are an essential part of rehearsing and choreographing any ballet, but the piano was also indispensable to Poulenc’s compositional process.
Among Poulenc's social and artistic acquaintances, there were as many painters as musicians or poets. 1957 saw the premiere of Le travail du peintre - The Work of a Painter, a setting of texts by Paul Éluard that pay tribute to the greatest painters/artists of the time: Picasso, Chagall, Braque, Gris, Klee, Miro and Villon. Poulenc wrote: ‘I thought it would stimulate my work to paint musically’. This piece is performed by Poulenc at the piano accompanied by Pierre Bernac, vocals.
Presenter：Stacey Rodda 盧廸思
The Culture Show - continually connecting visual art and music
Summer is here and it’s time to get out those fashionable straw hats – but don’t wear yours anywhere near a horse! In this episode we try on some of Picasso’s straw hats and hear Jacques Ibert’s Divertissement written for a production of Labiche's stage comedy ‘The Italian Straw Hat’ in 1929. The suite evokes the farce's absurd plot, where a wedding-day tryst is upended by a horse eating a woman's straw hat, sparking a frantic search amid escalating comedy.
And there’s more from Ibert by way of his Symphonic Suite for Orchestra – Paris, accompanied by the artwork of Hector Guimard, designer of the Paris Metro entrances; Jean-François Raffaëlli’s take on Parisian Suburbs; Louis Deutsch’s Mosque; Hugo Birger’s snapshot of a crowded café in a park; John Stewart’s image of a luxurious ocean liner and; Louis Abel-Truchet’s evocation of Montmartre's nightlife during the Belle Époque era.
These paintings complement Ibert’s music brilliantly.
