Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
Organ Concerto in G minor; Concert champêtre
Suite française d'après Claude Gervaise

Francis Poulenc was born in Paris on 7 January 1899, the son of Emile Poulenc, a director of the pharmaceutical firm Poulenc Frères, and his wife, Jenny Royer. His musical tastes and gifts were drawn largely from his mother, an amateur pianist, who gave him his first piano lessons, when he was five, leading to study, three years later, with Mlle Boutet de Monvel, a niece of César Franck. It was at the same period that he heard Debussy's Danses sacrées et profanes, a work that awoke in him an interest in that composer and a desire to explore the harmonic possibilities he suggested. By 1914 he had discovered the music of Schubert and of Stravinsky and now embarked on lessons with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, his teacher for the next three years. Through Viñes he met Erik Satie