Saint Saens Official Download

Passionate about travel, Saint-Saëns was strongly influenced by the cultural diversity he encountered in North Africa. Zahia Ziouani, as one immersed in these twin cultures herself, is able to shed new light on the composer’s travel-inspired works by reflecting them through the prism of the Algerian musical styles of Francisco Salvador-Daniel and Idir, as well as performing in the company of Rachid Brahim-Djelloul, Fettouma Ziouani and guest soloists.

Saint-Saëns excelled as a composer, conductor, pianist and organist – his composition output is enormous, reaching over 160 titles of which many are substantial – operas, ballets, symphonies – yet today much of his work remains neglected and he is known by a few works only: the Organ Symphony, Samson et Dalila, Danse Macabre and Carnival of the Animals. His original piano pieces are generally light ‘salon’ works but are nonetheless delightful and well formed.

Saint-Saëns excelled as a composer, conductor, pianist and organist – his composition output is enormous, reaching over 160 titles of which many are substantial – operas, ballets, symphonies – yet today much of his work remains neglected and he is known by a few works only: the Organ Symphony, Samson et Dalila, Danse Macabre and Carnival of the Animals. His original piano pieces are generally light ‘salon’ works but are nonetheless delightful and well formed.

Prior to the turn of the 20th century, Camille Saint-Saëns enriched the cello repertoire with two important compositions his Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor (Op.33) and his Cello Sonata No.1 in C minor (Op.32), which he dedicated to cellist Jules Lasserre. The writer Emile Baumann hailed this first Cello Sonata as “a unique work”, a masterpiece. It was composed in the autumn of 1872, and its first public performance – with J. Reuschel on cello and the composer at the piano – was given on 26 March 1873 at the Salle Érard in Paris.

Don’t be fooled by those well-known portraits of Saint-Saëns the bearded éminence grise—the two symphonies recorded here are the work of the young Camille, spreading his compositional wings and displaying a technical fluency far beyond his teenage years. In between, a certain musical menagerie roars, clucks, brays and squawks for attention.

‘It will be a strange score: people will either not like it at all, or will like it enormously’, prophesied Camille Saint-Saëns a few days before the premiere of Déjanire. The opera, first performed in Monte Carlo on 14 March 1911, is based on incidental music written in 1898 for the Béziers Arena. Fascinated by the subject, the composer soon wanted to give it a second, more ambitious life. He therefore conceived a mythological epic that inspired ‘powerfully evocative music’, according to Gabriel Fauré, who was struck by the impact of the choral writing.

Camille Saint-Saëns was a frequent performer on the Cavaillé-Coll organ of the Palais de Trocadéro, which was installed in 1878 for the Paris Expo. This famous instrument was relocated in 1939 to the Palais de Chaillot, and finally moved to the Lyon Auditorium in 1977, where it received a complete restoration in 2013.

Inspired by the great Romantic works of the piano trio repertoire, the Nebelmeer Trio – named after the emblematic painting by Caspar David Friedrich – embark on a joint exploration of a turmoiled romanticism. Composed ten years apart by two composers with a 20 year age difference, the trios for piano, violin and cello featuring in this album epitomize the quintessence of French Romantic music of the late 19th century.

Essential Saint Saëns／ADDA Simfònica, Josep Vicent, Damián Martínez Marco, ADDA Simfònica, Camile Saint-Saëns, Damián Martínez Marco, Josep Vicent.

Camille Saint-Saëns was 17 years of age when he composed his first printed work, the Trois Morceaux, which blends charming melodic creativity with a spiritual character. Louis Vierne’s 24 Pièces en style libre are unquestionably some of this composer’s most successful and popular works. Divided into two collections, these pieces are impressive for their great expressive quality, being evocative of places and people known to Vierne, alluding to musical forms both antique and impressionistic, and ranging in mood from the fiery to the serene.