Saint Saens

The present album is the second of two recorded by the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and Jean-Jacques Kantorow to commemorate the centenary of the death of Camille Saint-Saëns. On the first instalment the team offered us ‘deeply impressive performances in stunning sound’ (theclassicreview.com) of the composer’s first and second symphonies and the unnumbered Symphony in A major, but now the time has come for Saint-Saëns’ crowning glory in the symphonic genre: his Symphony No. 3 in C minor, generally known as the ‘Organ Symphony’. The work was composed in 1886, and Saint-Saëns had planned to dedicate it to Liszt but the latter’s death the same year caused the dedication in the published score to be modified to ‘in memory of Franz Liszt’.

Prodigiously gifted, Camille Saint-Saëns entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1848, at the age of 13. There he discovered the symphonies of the great German and Austrian composers and soon began to try his own hand at the genre. The Symphony in A major stems from this period and although it was most likely never performed in his lifetime it demonstrates his exceptional talent to the full. Only a couple of years later, in 1853, Saint-Saëns submitted his second attempt at writing a symphony to one of the capital’s concert societies.

The two sonatas for cello and piano by Camille Saint-Saëns stand as bookends to what was an impressively long compositional career spanning more than seven decades. Much of Saint-Saëns' music for cello, including these two sonatas, has been dismissed as inferior and is rarely performed or recorded. Only the first cello concerto, often played by advanced students of the instrument, remains a common occurrence on disc or stage.

Precocious as a child, Camille Saint-Saëns was once known as the French Mendelssohn. The remarkably assured First Symphony, completed at the age of 17, was praised by Berlioz and Gounod at its first performance. The elegantly crafted Second Symphony defies convention not least by basing the first movement on a fugue, while the symphonic poem Phaéton skilfully brings this Greek mythological drama to life with stampeding horses, thunderbolts and a moving apotheosis. This is Volume 1 of 3 devoted to the five Saint-Saëns Symphonies.

A welcome addition to the catalog of Saint-Saëns' chamber music, this disc presents four of his pieces for violin and piano in a balanced and satisfying program. Violinist Ulf Wallin and pianist Roland Pöntinen have a sympathetic feeling for Saint-Saëns that shines through their polished performances, particularly in the two sonatas – works of such interest and vitality that it is inexplicable that they are infrequently performed and recorded. In its pensive lyricism and effervescent virtuosity, the Violin Sonata No. 1 shows the influences of Brahms and Mendelssohn. Wallin gives full bow to the long, noble melodies in the first two movements, and delivers the brilliant scherzo and finale with verve.

It is good to be reminded of du Pré’s vivid, intense and joyful music-making” wrote Gramophone of this pairing of cello concertos by Schumann and Saint-Saëns. “The Schumann has that kind of spontaneous freedom of line that made her account of the Elgar so famous. Her delicacy of response in the slow movement is matched by a romantic flair which carries the outer movements along so admirably. Barenboim directs a sympathetic accompaniment, following her subtle manipulation of rubato with complete understanding.

The debt owed by French music to Saint-Saëns is often overlooked. At a time when many composers saw opera as the only way forward, Saint-Saëns took the supposedly Germanic forms of symphony, sonata and concerto, and transformed them into something idiomatically French. His five concertos for piano and orchestra demonstrate his own skills as a pianist and reflect his admiration for Liszt.

Nirgendwo könne ein Komponist seinen Stil besser entwickeln als in der Kirche, wo die Übel des Kunstbetriebes, Applaus und Erfolgsdenken, keinen Platz besäßen, bekannte Camille Saint-Saëns einmal, und er wußte, wovon er sprach: Er selbst war zwanzig Jahre lang als Organist an der Pariser Madeleine tätig gewesen. Die Werke dieser CD belegen Saint-Saëns' These. Sowohl das Requiem als auch die Psalmvertonung verblüffen durch einen ganz eigenen Tonfall, der eine eingängige Melodik, raffiniert chromatische Harmonik und klangsinnliche Instrumentation verbindet.