Saint Saens

François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles offer us a double-sided portrait of Saint-Saëns here. On one side, some of the most fascinating symphonic poems of French Romanticism are revealed in all the shimmering timbres of the period. On the other, we rediscover a composer who enjoyed a good laugh (The Carnival of the Animals also returns to its original colours!), when he was not involved in the early days of the cinema, with the very first music ever composed for a film!

Ensemble Musique Oblique, Saint-Saens - Le Carnaval des animaux, Quintet Op14, L'Assassinat Op128
Harmonia Mundi | 2 juin 2000 | Classical | APE+CUE | 3% Recovery | 242 MB | Covers+Booklet | 73'38"

Le bestiaire d’un enfant du siècle.
Un lion, des gallinacées, un éléphant, des tortues, un coucou, un cygne… et des pianistes. Ce joyeux inventaire ne saurait faire oublier que Saint-Saëns fut avec L’Assassinat du duc de Guise (1908) l’un des premiers compositeurs pour le cinéma.

The bestiary of a child of the century.
A lion, cocks and hens, an elephant, tortoises, a cuckoo, a swan… and pianists. This merry parade reminds us that with L’Assassinat du duc de Guise Saint-Saëns was one of the earliest composers of film-music.

Mischa Maisky's rich, velvety tone and brilliant technique give all the works here an arresting, memorable quality. The recordings, too, are full and resonant and, in the concerto, the Orpheus players sound as passionately involved as the soloist; the tuttis lose all feeling of formality. (By comparison, the LSO for Isserlis lack intensity.) I was swept along by Maisky's performance until the third movement, where he takes the main theme very slowly, more Andante than Allegro moderato, then speeds up substantially for the virtuoso passages.

After a highly acclaimed recording of Briten’s Cello Symphony (ONYX4058) Pieter Wispelwey and the Flanders Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Seiko Kim, turn to two romantic cello concertos whose neglect is hard to fathom. Lalo, unusually for a French composer in the mid 19th century, was drawn to chamber music, and formed a string quartet (in which he played viola, and later second violin) that championed the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. His passion for chamber music developed to embrace large scale orchestral works – two violin concertos, the famous 'Symphonie espagnole' for violin and orchestra, a symphony in G minor, the Piano Concerto and the concerto recorded here: the Cello concerto in D minor of 1877.

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. The work is divided into three movements: the first and third have a tragic character, while the second offers an oasis of quiet serenity. The work opens with a dramatic Allegro in sonata form. The second movement stems from an organ improvisation performed by Saint-Saëns at Saint-Augustin. The final movement takes up the tumultuous and agitated character of the first and ends in an unrelenting race.

Maximilian Hornung - Saint-Saens- Suite und Romanze / Dvorak- Cellokonzert
Bamberger Symphoniker / Sebastian Tewinkel
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 282 MB | Full Artwork: 83 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Sony Classical # 88697749252 | Country/Year: Germany 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, Cello

"Hornung setzt sich für Dvorak ein mit Haut und Haar, mit einer Intensität, die Herz und Gefühl nach außen kehrt. Mit Saint-Saëns` Suite und als Schlusspunkt die Romanze. Wunderbare Musik, die Hornung mit vollen Zügen genießt." ~FonoForum