I’ve just been assigned a new piece to practice as part of the University of Chicago Chamber Music Ensemble — Francis Poulenc’s Sonate pour flûte et piano (FP 164).

The piece was premiered by Jean-Pierre Rampal — and by coincidence, I’ve also been reading his biography lately!

Rampal had such a wonderful presence — full of humor, tolerance, and resilience. He was both humble and brilliant. Rather than trying to rephrase and risk losing the warmth of his voice, I’ll just share a passage from his book directly:

Thank You, Elizabeth Coolidge, Thank You!

Even in the fifties, with my career progressing steadily in Europe, I knew that my next real challenge was the United States… Would Americans want to listen to a French flutist?

If there’s anyone to thank for giving me the opportunity, it’s Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, or, perhaps more accurately, the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation at the Library of Congress in Wash-ington, which arranged my debut. And the story all started with a phone call in 1957 from Francis Poulenc.

“Jean-Pierre, you know you’ve always wanted me to write a sonata for flute and piano? Well, I’m going to,” he said. “And the best thing is that the Americans will pay for it! I’ve been commissioned by the Coolidge Foundation to write a chamber piece in memory of Elizabeth Coolidge. I never knew her, so I think the piece is yours.”

Poulenc has attitudes!

(Poulenc )“I just don’t think I can write a piece of chamber music. I wrote a very bad string trio, and I tried to do a string quartet, but it’s even worse —it’s still unfinished. I really only succeed when I’m writing for two distinct voices.”

…

It was just as well Poulenc never lived to hear [the orchestrated version], because I’m sure he’d have put his hands over his ears in horror. I was once asked to play the piece with the added orchestral accompaniment and firmly refused to do so. “Absolutely not,” I said. “It’s vulgar!”

Well, Pahud have an orchestra version recording — how do you like it:

Rampal was very involved for the composition

A month or so after we’d talked about the Sonata, Francis phoned again… he said he’d finished a version of the Flute Sonata and would like me to come and play it with him.

Francis lived in a top-floor apartment overlooking the Jardins du Luxembourg, near the little square which today bears his name. His place was small but comfortable, a grand piano dominating the living room. His angular frame was similarly imposing, and though you couldn’t call him handsome his features were all larger than life, especially his ears-—he had a forceful charm that was quite winning when he was not suffering from the depressions that would so often haunt him.

When I arrived, he handed me the music—or, rather, a scrap of music.

“We will play it together,” he said. “It will be very good.”

I was not so sure. The first movement seemed disjointed, and there wasn’t much of a theme or direction. The ideas came and went, but had no real coherence. And some of the fingering was impossible. I said so.

“This is how I work,” he replied. “You will see. It will be very good.”

Not long afterward, he called me again and asked if I’d come over and try some of the revisions he’d done. When I got there, I saw that his ideas were more coherent this time, but still far from finished.

“You take this,” he said when we were through, handing me the music. “See if it’s playable.”

So off I went with a collection of bits and pieces that didn’t resemble a flute sonata at all. We worked this way for several months, with me periodically showing up at his apartment, trying out whatever he’d written and then taking it away with me. I did change a few phrases here and there and gave Francis some ideas as to how the work should hang together, but I must admit that at the beginning I was rather panicky. I simply couldn’t see where the piece was going— and was very much afraid Francis couldn’t, either. Yet he became more confident, and slowly but surely the Sonata for Flute and Piano took its final shape.

The premier was a huge success. And anecdotal fact: Arthur Rubinstein heard it first

In January 1958, the Coolidge Foundation gave Poulenc permission to perform the piece, with me playing the flute part, at the Strasbourg Festival. The Washington, D.C., debut was set for Valentine’s Day. I arrived in Strasbourg two days before the concert in order to have plenty of time to practice with Francis. Poulenc was not noted for his punctuality at rehearsals, and sometimes hadn’t even learned his part by the time the concert was supposed to begin. I once asked him-we were making a recording at the time-if he’d studied his part. “Not much,” he said, “but when I come to the bits I don’t know, I can always keep my foot on the pedal.” (Unfortunately this is an option a flutist doesn’t have. Many’s the time I’d have liked to have a pedal I could hold down in order to see my way through a bar that was mastering me!)

On the morning before the first performance, Poulenc called me.

“Arthur Rubinstein is here,” he said. “I’ve just talked to him, and he very much wants to hear my new sonata. The only trouble is, he has to leave tomorrow before the performance. Do you think you could come over right now and have just one more rehearsal?”

“With pleasure,” I replied.

So the unofficial premiere of the Poulenc Sonata for Flute and Piano took place in a concert hall in Strasbourg with an audience of one Arthur Rubinstein, sitting in the middle of the front row. The applause we received from him was as memorable as at any concert I have played. Twenty years later, when we ran into each other in the Drake Hotel in New York, the first thing Arthur said to me was,

“Do you remember the premiere of Francis’s Flute Sonata in 1958, during the Strasbourg Festival?” (The reputation of Rubinstein’s fantastic memory is not false!)

How could I ever forget? Rubinstein’s enthusiastic response meant a very great deal to me, and the Sonata itself was responsible for launching my career in the United States. It will always hold a special place in my memory. When the first edition was published, I was credited with editing the flute part— but unfortunately my name was misspelled. So much for posterity…

Reference

Music, My Love. Jean-Pierre Rampal: An Autobiography with Deborah Wise (1989) Random House New York.