Sonata for Piano Duet, FP. 8 (Poulenc)
Movements
i Prelude, ii Rustique, iii Final
Notes
The 19-year-old Francis Poulenc finished his Sonata for four hands in June 1918, while still under the influence of Satie’s Socrate and its lessons of purity, balance and reserve. Certainly the sonata owes nothing to the essentially lyrical piano duets of Fauré, Debussy or Ravel. Instead ‘purity’ is at work in the C major without accidentals of the central ‘Rustique’, ‘reserve’ in its ostinatos and short-winded phrases.