Flute Sonata

The opening of this sonata seems to fall out of the sky as the flute swoops downward, birdlike, in a broken triad that descends in demisemiquavers before opening into a broader melody that keeps on pushing downward in chromatic steps. The pianist cushions all this with an undulating flow of soft arpeggios that Poulenc wanted to be played with plenty of sustaining pedal—the "butter in the sauce", as he said. Written in 1957, although using ideas he’d developed earlier, the piece was a high-profile U.S. Library of Congress commission in memory of the heiress and music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. But he took care to give it a distinctly French sound, modelled on Debussy and refined by a graceful but free-spirited sense of balance that he called "la mesure française". With three movements—a melancholic “Allegretto”, a slow “Cantilena” and an innocently exuberant “Presto” finale—it’s a true gem of a piece that ranks among the most frequently performed music in the flute repertoire.