American minimalism can punch and thrill, hypnotise and slow your pulse, but how often does it make you laugh? What a brilliant idea, then, from Kazuki Yamada and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to pair John Adams’ formative 1980 epic Harmonium – a sonic wrestle with love and death and desire – with music by the wittiest, slipperiest, most self-puncturing composer in the business, an artist who will break your heart with the cheekiest of grins: Francis Poulenc.
It’s entirely typical that Poulenc can’t even bring himself to call a symphony a symphony. Any delusions of grandeur are seen off at the pass by diminutising his 1948 “Sinfonietta”, which duly unfolds in a series of impeccably shaded and textured dances, marches and melodies that thumb their nose at anything so dutiful as development.
