Le Carnaval Des Animaux

Though chamber music is incontestably the least well-known component of his corpus, Camille Saint-Saëns was a master of the genre, leaving us with a large collection of works. We may think of Saint-Saëns as a conservative and very academic composer. And yet, we would be well advised to remember that he was, in fact, a pioneer. Even as a young man, Saint-Saëns delved into chamber music instead of opera, the conventional form for an up-and- coming musician. He composed chamber music throughout his life - through to the final woodwind sonatas in 1921 - restoring luster to the form which, in France, had been all but forgotten.

Sweet Saint-Saëns and wicked Apollinaire may be empires apart, but their hilarious animal portraits in Le Carnaval des Animaux and Le Bestaire ooze the same satirical genius. Belgian composer Piet Swerts translated the evident musicality in the Bestiaire poems into real melodies, and he rearranged Le Carnaval for clarinet, strings and piano. The acclaimed Roeland Hendrikx Ensemble fuses both zoos in an unparalleled chamber-musical Animal Farm which showcases the grand façades but also the foibles of the normal, and not so normal creatures that populate it.