Is it just me, or does Francis Poulenc playfully riff on the scherzo to Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony in the third movement of his Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano? Maybe not, but I’m going to go with it, since the potential delusion serves as an excellent excuse for me to juxtapose music of Poulenc and Beethoven on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.”

Poulenc’s Trio, composed in 1926, begins very somberly indeed, before taking off with irrepressible joie de vivre. The central movement is both elegant and wistful in a manner characteristic of this composer, and the cheeky finale is presented with an ironic smile. We’ll hear a 1972 performance featuring oboist Rudolph Vrbsky, bassoonist Alexander Heller, and pianist Seth Carlin.

Then Pablo Casals will preside over a makeshift orchestra consisting of dozens of musicians at the 1969 Marlboro Music Festival for a warm traversal of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4. (While Casals conducted a number of the Beethoven symphonies at Marlboro, he did not do the “Eroica.”) The legendary cellist was affiliated with the Marlboro festival for the last 13 years of his life, from 1960 to 1973.

Robert Schumann once characterized the symphony as “a Greek maiden between two Norse giants” – certainly a provocative image. We’ll temper this very Teutonic utterance with a splash of Gallic insouciance, on “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday at 6 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTO: A caricature of Beethoven adorning a dinner plate designed by Jean Cocteau; decades earlier, Cocteau was responsible for promoting Poulenc and five of his composer-colleagues as the collective “Les six”