Pierre Bernac gave the first performance of the Chansons gaillards in 1926 (with Poulenc at the piano), but his career on the concert platform did not take real shape until the mid-1930s, when he was already in his mid-thirties. He and Poulenc shared a regular performing partnership for the next 25 years. Their first recording of Poulenc's songs was on a French Ultraphone issue, and in 1936 they also made the French HMV record reproduced here. That was all until the liberation of Paris in 1944, when Walter Legge travelled to the city and established contact with several French musicians. He invited Bernac and Poulenc to London, and recorded them in the remainder of the Poulenc items listed above. Almost all the songs were re-recorded by the artists in the late 1950s (they are now available on Ades, 8/90), although by that time Bernac was about 60 years old and his voice had deteriorated.
EMI's new disc shows both artists to excellent advantage. Poulenc always said that his best piano music was to be found in the accompaniments to his songs, and his playing is very accomplished. (His solo piano recordings are often somewhat slapdash, and would not have pleased his teacher, the great Ricardo Vines.) Bernac's voice was never a particularly beautiful instrument, and even here it is clear that he was not a young man, yet there is more than enough tonal bloom and flexibility to serve an extraordinary artistic sensibility. How wonderfully he conveys the dignity and pathos of the song ''C'' (Aragon), written at the time of the occupation; and he enters into the fun of ''Fetes galantes'' (the second Aragon poem) with joyful abandon, and mocks and teases in the surrealistic Le bestiaire. (Interestingly, he announces each creature contained in that curious collection: such was not the case in an earlier and equally vivacious recording of the mini-cycle by Claire Croiza, also with Poulenc—nla.)
At first it might seem strange to partner Britten with Poulenc, but in fact it was an excellent idea, since the composers knew each other well and both enjoyed a long and close association with the artists they accompany. Before becoming an exclusive Decca artist Britten made several HMV recordings. His 1942 version of the Michelangelo Sonnets was his very first with Pears, the sessions taking place just two months after the work's premiere, given by both artists. There is a partic-ular youthful freshness in their interpretation, and the same can be said for the Donne Sonnets. Britten and Pears made later recordings of these cycles for Decca, but the ones here have a special vitality. Transfers throughout the disc are first-rate.'