Poulenc - Sinfonietta (complete/full) / Nathalie Stutzmann 

I absolutely agree with you.. Because of his empathy with popular music, there is a kind of natural warmth and wit in his serious work. I would add Copland, and even Walton to your list, but definitely not Stravinsky. Much as I love him, his attempts feel like your dad dancing at a disco!

He has several. Look up.

That's Poulenc for you! The opening measures of his "Melancolie" have the same effect on me!

A LOT more. I detect snippets of childhood songs, which is consistent with Poulenc's subtitle to the work, "Goodbye to Youth." Sort of bittersweet. Allusions to Brahms' Cradle Song, is just one. I recalled them all at one time.

Roger Wilco Natalie is quite fetching in addition to be faithful to the score and doing a superb job of conducting.

AHA! You noticed too, Roger.

Plagiarism is pretentious by definition. I don't agree that this piece is full of cliches. One call always find similarities. It's in the neo-classical style and everything that implies. Distinguish influence from imitation please.

Many allusions to childhood. Hence nursery rhyme tunes. Subtitle of the work, therefore, is "Farewell To Youth."

+Roger Wilco Indeed. From one Roger to another.

me gusta mucho a mi tambien.... no sé nada pero me parece que su direcciòn es muy clara, precisa

John Hedger ROFL! You are an ignorant uncreative ass. A composition teacher is a flunky who doesn't compose for a living. Otherwise, note that Poulenc's music is being performed whilst the composition teacher hasn't a creative clue. And, oh yes, my music is heard in feature movies.

Easy Aspi, At least I am an uncreative ass who posts with my true name. You obviously don't understand the humor of my post. So, All composition professors are dilettantes? Does this include Paul Hindemith? And, no great composers ever benefited by taking composition lessons in their early stages? Ravel learned nothing studying composition under Gabriel Faure? I would be curious to hear all of these wonderful movie scores you are bragging about Mr. Anonymous! :)

+John Hedger John, I re-read your post, above. And you are right. I didn't read your entire post the first time. Sorry. Fortunately, YT has provided us with several performances. I have a mono LP of it with George Pretre conducting. Glad to hear this on YT because my analog disc skips. The performances here have the strings sound like real strings and not a distorted digitized version. Tchaikovsky comes to mind, among others, as also having a sense of humor. His Nutcracker has a snatch of Sweet Rosy O'Grady (pun intended). And the pas de deux is a run up and own the scales. It became a pop hit song called "Here." I have one notable (HAW!) example of a film score clever black humor. It's the title music from "Boys from Brazil" by Jerry Goldsmith. It's the Blue Danube Waltz by J. Strauss in the style of R. Strauss. The connection is that J. was Jewish and Richard was anti-Jewish. And the premise of the movie had to do with cloning Hitler in 95 boys. Rather stupid movie except for the clever title music.

+John Hedger That's why this turkey is teaching and not composing. Those that CAN, do. Those who can't teach.

+Roger Regor --- Schütz, Bach, Haydn, Schumann, Liszt, Schoenberg, Ligeti... do you know them? All of them were teachers... ;)

:) right on.

None she simply has passion for this wonderful music.

Definitely right.

But Poulenc typically uses discords to break the illusion of classicism. Honestly I can't tell if they're out of tune accidentally or deliberately

And you look like (and are, judging from your unimaginative and juvenile comment) a douchebag.

Are you kidding?