The acclaimed combination of Diego Fasolis and Swiss Radio present Camille Saint-Saëns’s Partsongs and Requiem Mass.
This is the only available recording of the Requiem Mass.
Saint-Saëns’s Requiem is a highly appealing work with beautiful and complex harmonies. There is plenty of colour, too – as one would expect from this inexhaustibly inventive opera composer – but also sincerity and gravitas.
Concepts such as evolution and progress are hardly fitting when considering the history of the arts. Each period and place has its own language, which borrows from what had preceded it, paves the way for what will follow, but also rejects some elements of the past and will be partly rejected by the future. Forms and genres prized by one generation are forgotten by the following, and new styles become fashionable in place of the preceding ones. Each of them may produce – and normally does – great masterpieces, which influence in turn what will happen in the future decades.
Among the virtuosity warhorses in the piano repertory, the five concertos by Camille Saint-Saens have established an appealing reputation. The audiences worldwide are enchanted to attend performances by great virtuosos in utterly melodious and harmonic works with dazzling keyboard pyrotechnics and musical ideas of the most refined quality. Yet, a very few of the professional pianists dare to approach this pianistic output by one of the most prolific and multifaceted artists of the European culture (composer, playwright, philosopher, astronomer, archaeologist, poet etc). To find the proper touch, to balance the wild virtuosity with the subtle musical concept, to get the deepest level of significance in these works – are all difficult tasks that require a high level of artistry (not only in pianistic terms).
Following the success of his first Decca release of solo piano music by Chopin, Liszt, and Ravel, Benjamin Grosvenor demonstrates his aptitude in the concerto repertoire on his second CD, Rhapsody in Blue, recorded with James Judd and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. This is a refreshing change from the usual Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov concertos one hears from young artists eager to impress, and Grosvenor is clever enough to play not only engaging concertos by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Gershwin, but to toss in short bon-bons by these composers to sweeten the program.