Programme notes: DARIUS MILHAUD (1892–1974) Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & Piano, Op. 47 (1918) IV. Douloureux

DARIUS MILHAUD 1892–1974

Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & Piano, Op. 47 1918 IV. Douloureux

Stewart McIlwham flute

Amy Roberts oboe

Benjamin Mellefont clarinet

Fionnuala Ward piano

The group of composers known as ‘Les Six’, to which Darius Milhaud belonged, along with the diverse line-up of Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger and Germaine Tailleferre, was keen to promote new kinds of expression, consciously lighthearted and humorous, free from both the Impressionism of Debussy and any trace of Germanic pomposity. Their meetings, frequented by Jean Cocteau and other poets, artists and writers, only went on for a few years (1916–23) but made an impact on the world of art. The idea of liberating themselves from so many constraints gave them a natural affinity with the surrealists, and they also welcomed external influences such as jazz and Latin American music.

The latter was especially important to Darius Milhaud: his early Sonata Op. 47 for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & Piano was composed in Brazil in 1918. He had arrived there that February as secretary to poet Paul Claudel, then serving as French ambassador to Brazil. The Spanish influenza pandemic reached Brazil by August, and soon daily deaths were surging into the thousands. Milhaud was greatly influenced by the horrors he witnessed, and wrote in his memoir: 'The supply of coffins gave out, and you constantly saw cartloads of corpses that were thrown into the common graves in the cemeteries.' It was the sight of such mass death that influenced, at least in part, his Op. 47 Sonata. Its final movement, Douloureux ('painful' or 'griefstricken'), is a sombre funeral march of sorts – perhaps the composer’s personal tribute to all those who had fallen victim to the pandemic.

Programme note adapted from the Warner Classics booklet 'Moderniste', 9029554870, and appears courtesy of Warner Classics. Original note by Denis Verroust, Association Jean-Pierre Rampal (jprampal.com). Translation: Susannah Howe. Darius Milhaud