Françaix: Piano Concerto

Jean Françaix and his wife Blanche, 1937

Here is one of the earliest recordings of music by one of France's most cheerful musical voices, Jean Françaix (1912-1997).  Françaix made his reputation in 1932 with a work for piano and orchestra, his Concertino, and he followed it up four years later with this equally saucy and delightful Concerto.  One imagines that he wrote this work with the gramophone in mind, for each of its four movements is timed to exactly fill out a 12" 78-rpm side!  And, in fact, the concert première, in June of 1937, seems to have taken place after this recording was made:

Françaix: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1936)
Jean Françaix, piano
Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris conducted by Nadia Boulanger
Recorded February 9, 1937
Victor 15114 and 15115, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 40.93 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 19.7 MB)

The original issue of this recording was, of course, on French HMV.  Victor, which issued the set in 1938, does not appear to have seen fit to issue it with an album; they didn't begin issuing two-record groupings as album sets until 1937, and even then, seems to have been selective about which such groupings received albums.  Such worthy contenders as Landowska's recording of Bach's Toccata in D, and Cortot's of Mendelssohn's "Variations serieuses" - both issued about the same time as the Françaix - also did not receive albums.