It was, for example, three decades before anyone thought of putting The Real Inspector Hound and Black Comedy on the same bill. Poulenc’s delicate word-setting, luminous sonorities and uncompromising harmonies in Un Soir de Neige provided the BBC Singers with an opportunity to display their balanced ensemble and exemplary tuning This was the real Poulenc, after all.Lynne Walker. Under Tortelier’s direction, the medieval text unfolded with operatic intensity, each scene vividly portrayed by the Leeds Festival Chorus and the BBC Singers. One of his earliest religious works, the 12-movement Stabat Mater may reflect Poulenc in more restrained mood, especially in some of the orchestral writing, but not when it comes to the luxurious soprano solos beautifully sung here by Lynne Dawson. That alchemy was magically at work here, particularly in the Mozart-inspired slow movement.Poulenc’s Stabat Mater and his short unaccompanied setting of Paul Eluard’s wintry text Un Soir de Neige reflect an older, more mature Poulenc. He became a composer of more serious note after a tragic accident involving a colleague.

Donohoe and Roscoe homed in on the work’s dynamic character from an opening exchange of violent intensity.”Poulenc may never have penned an original note,” wrote the composer Ned Rorem, “but every note became pure Poulenc through some witty alchemy”. In this performance, the orchestral suite from Les Biches turned out to be a slightly flat opener.It’s unlikely that Peter Donohoe and Martin Roscoe could ever be confused with the Labeque sisters, who’ve made the Concerto for Two Pianos something of their own piece. The BBC Philharmonic’s celebrations were conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier, another Frenchman more feted in this country than in his own.The concert attracted a large audience curious to check out the composer who was once described as “a bit of a monk and a bit of a hooligan”.There’s no escaping the fact that Stravinsky’s Pulcinella is a strikingly obvious pattern for Poulenc’s ballet score, Les Biches, the younger composer’s early attempt at his own brand of neo-classical piquancy, elegant instrumentation and whimsical charm. Couperin, Stravinsky, Messiaen and even Edith Piaf jostled with a hundred other unbilled stars in Poulenc’s music.
Whatever goes on in heaven, and although he is still sniffed at in his native country, Poulenc has been enjoying a very happy 100th anniversary in this country. Some of the same composers, including Mozart, turned up at the BBC Philharmonic’s centenary tribute to Francis Poulenc in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall.

IN A drawing by Otto Bohler, there is a distinguished roll-call of composers congratulating Schubert on his 100th birthday in heaven. Taylor and Roach got theirs for making some of the most provocative and rousing music the Barbican Hall has heard in ages.Linton Chiswick. Whether Taylor, Roach, or anyone in the audience knew exactly what was being said, is debatable – but a language was certainly being spoken.Occasionally, older jazz musicians get standing ovations for merely being alive (no mean feat in this business). For the first 15 minutes, Roach seemed mostly to be responding to Taylor’s lead – understandable considering the charismatic force of this diminutive giant – but a rare kind of organic growth quickly liberated the music.

Gnome-like, he crouches close to the keys and rattles around in fitful bursts, moving between ferocious, two-fisted crescendos and delicate, exotic counterpoint.The second set featured both musicians working together in a partnership that has delighted avant-garde jazz fans since their first collaboration in 1979. Where the satire ends and the serious business of creation begins is never clear with Taylor, unless you’re prepared to close your eyes.For when he did finally sit at the piano, he could still have been sending up the creative process if the music hadn’t been so subtle and sublime Taylor plucks notes like ripe cherries. When he appeared, he continued to recite, accompanying the text with what looked like a hybrid of voguing and classical ballet. Most 75-year-olds are content to celebrate the fact that they possess all four limbs, never mind using them independently to create this kind of polyrhythmic chicanery.
And then Taylor came on stage.. or the sound of him did. He began his performance offstage, reading his free-associative poetry into a microphone while the audience stared at the grand piano, the drum kit.. and each other. He opened the first set with a witty and warm-hearted waltz rooted around a pattern on bass-drum and hi-hat. It sounded like a soundtrack awaiting its silent movie, and endorsed the cliche about Roach.

Without doubt the all-time greatest innovator on drums, Roach played in Charlie Parker’s modern jazz laboratory (with Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and the like), and has also proved himself a tidy and intelligent solution to the problems of jazz’s increasing fragmentation into freedom, whenever one has been needed. You know all this, but you still can’t prepare for the onslaught that is Cecil Taylor at the grand piano

Max Roach couldn’t. In fact, he isn’t tempted by even the most esoteric rules of tonality; he doesn’t play to any orthodox metre; and (this separates the fans from the sceptics) he plays with his fists, elbows and forearms, in addition to his fingers. NOBODY SAID it would be easy; and if they had, who’d have believed them? At the age of 69, and after almost 50 years in the business, pianist Cecil Taylor remains controversial He doesn’t play tunes. A damn fine way to treat two Steinways.Paul TaylorTo 13 February (0121-236 4455). As we see here, there will be regrets and recriminations either way, not to mention the Schadenfreude of the eventual teacher (and failed practitioner) who tells you that you’ve misused your talents and aren’t good enough.Keeping their audience tantalised to the end, Dykstra and Greenblatt finished with some mesmerising Bach and then, as an encore, a rather camp arrangement of “Maple Leaf Rag”. Their subtext is often: “Just think what I could have achieved, if I’d been as lucky as you and had me as a father.” It’s a no-win situation for both child and parents.