Q & A with pianist Simon Callaghan

Babar the Elephant - the much-loved childrens story about an Elephant who goes on travels to a city to learn about the world - was a story French composer Francis Poulenc was inspired to write for the book illustrator's granddaughter.

This year the work that Poulenc wrote has been recorded by actress Miriam Margolyes and pianist Simon Callaghan. We asked Simon to explain a little bit more about the work, the book that inspired it and what it was like to record it.

For those who may not already be aware, tell us about Babar. Who wrote it?

Babar is not only the star of a series of French children’s books, but was also the inspiration behind one of Francis Poulenc’s most beloved pieces. The story began with Cécile de Brunhoff, who made up the bedtime story in 1930 for her two sons, Laurent and Mathieu. They loved the tale of Babar and his adventures so much that they begged their father to create illustrations, initiating a series that was to be the crowning achievement of Jean de Brunhoff’s life, and the start of a collection that has become a French national treasure.

Tell us about how this story came to be set to music. Why did Poulenc write it?

In much the same way that the story began at the De Brunhoff house, ten years later Francis Poulenc was spending time with the granddaughter of one of his cousins.

She became bored with whatever music he was playing and put her Babar storybook on the piano.

To her delight and amazement, Poulenc began to improvise piano music to the story, sparking musical ideas that were to simmer away in Poulenc’s mind until he officially completed his score in 1945.

Since then it has become of the most popular works for narrator and piano, and has also been arranged for other combinations of instruments, most famously a colourful orchestration by Jean Françaix.

Miriam Margolyes is the narrator on the recording - one of only a small number of women who have - what was the impetus to work with her?

Miriam Margolyes was our first choice to narrate Babar. We were sat around the dinner table one night in early August 2020, discussing our forthcoming Poulenc project and what would be the best way to start.

We chose Babar and I asked my friend Simon Callow to put me in touch with Miriam. I’m so grateful that he did, because she is wonderful and I am proud of what we achieved together. I did quite lot of research into previous recordings of the work, and realised that less than 25% of them are narrated by women.

Although Poulenc premiered the piece with a male narrator and indeed made the first recording with a man (Pierre Fresnay), I was quite surprised at this imbalance, not least because of course, the story itself originated with a woman.

This desire to redress the balance, coupled with an awareness of Miriam Margolyes’ exquisite abilities in story-telling meant that we couldn’t imagine anyone else doing this so well!

And this is a 2020 production meaning it was recorded in isolation. What were the challenges putting it together?

We would have loved to invite Miriam to our recording studios, but given the lockdown and general COVID restrictions, we just couldn’t make this happen.

So, I recorded the piano part on 9 August and we travelled to Miriam’s beautiful south London home a week later (wearing masks and socially distancing) to work on the narration together.

By a stroke of luck she already had a recording booth set up in her home for other voice work, so everything fell neatly into place.

I must say therefore, that there really were no challenges involved – the whole project was a pleasure from start to finish!

• miriam margolyes
• simon callaghan