Poulenc: Complete Songs Volume 1 – review

This the start of what is projected as a five-disc survey of Poulenc's songs, with the implication that the same set of six singers, with Malcolm Martineau as the ever-immaculate accompanist, will feature throughout. That would explain, for instance, why in this first collection the bass baritone Jonathan Lemalu features on just a single song lasting barely a minute, the soprano Lorna Anderson in just the brief Trois Poèmes de Louise de Vilmorin and one other setting of Ronsard, while soprano Felicity Lott appears like a grand dame for the final cycle here, La Courte Paille. The rest is shared more evenly between the soprano Lisa Milne, tenor Robert Murray and baritone Christopher Maltman. But the rationale for what is in this collection escapes me, and is not explained in the sleeve notes: it's certainly not chronological, for the songs range from the beginning of Poulenc's career in the 1920s to near its end in 1960; nor are they grouped by poet, while the layout of the song texts without dates doesn't help. The best performances, though – Murray in the early Cocteau cycle Cocardes, Maltman in the Chansons Gaillardes, Milne in Fiançailles pour Rire – are very fine, even if it remains a disc to sample piecemeal rather than as a whole, and doesn't suggest that the series will supersede EMI's box set of Poulenc's songs compiled in the late 1990s.