Sinfonietta F major, FP 141

For the elegant Parisian Francis Poulenc, his music was never about everything. He only wanted to play, one might say. His music sounds light and witty, simple and straightforward, dance-like and at times satirical - an antithesis to German profundity, to use an old cliché. And indeed, it was the self-confessed anti-Wagnerian Erik Satie who became the key figure in the 19-year-old's decision to devote his life to music against his parents' wishes.

Poulenc belonged to the legendary "Group des Six", whose members, in the spirit of Satie and Jean Cocteau, were united in their rejection of both Wagner's confessional music and Debussy's Impressionism, and who took up the banner of young composing under the sign of refined simplicity, neoclassicism, jazz and vaudeville. Poulenc's breakthrough came in 1923 with the ballet music "Les biches", which he wrote for the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Thanks to the charm and tonal attractiveness of this music, regular commissions soon followed, including one from the BBC in 1947, who wanted a symphonic work from him for the one-year anniversary of their third programme. That this became a "Sinfonietta" is typical of Poulenc, who had retained a certain aversion to large, confessional forms.

On the surface, the "Sinfonietta" follows the traditional pattern of a four-movement symphony, but it does not at all redeem the richness of relationships between the individual movements, themes and motifs that was so intensively pursued in the 19th century. With a light hand, Poulenc combines various musical characters that are strung together as loosely as they are organically. Music like a mild summer breeze. Again and again it becomes dance-like, Mozart and Stravinsky resound, also a little Tchaikovsky. The Andante is contemplative, and the finale is a cheeky, cheerful finale that sounds as if Joseph Haydn had spent a night in vaudeville. That's all you need to know, in keeping with the composer who is said to have once said: "Don't analyse my music - love it!"