Music In The Museum - The Baronet And The Playboy

The Baronet and the Playboy: Piano Portraits by Parry and Poulenc.

Francis Poulenc - Les soirées de Nazelles (1936).
Sir Hubert Parry - Shulbrede Tunes (1914).

David Owen Norris has been giving recitals that blend music and pictures for many years. This concert features Sir Hubert Parry’s Shulbrede Tunes and Poulenc’s Les soirées de Nazelles.

Shulbrede Tunes is a series of musical pictures of his daughter Dolly, her family and the beautiful mediaeval house they lived in, Shulbrede Priory.

Poulenc’s Les soirées de Nazelles is a series of portraits of people you can know only through the composer’s ironic titles – Old but Spry, Heart on Sleeve, and so on.

They asked a famous political cartoonist, Martin Rowson, to listen to them playing each portrait until he ‘saw’ the characters, and as he drew them, David filmed him in the act.