Centenary edition Episode 1 – Orchestral works
Symphony in A
Symphonies 1, 2 & 3
Symphony in F Urbs Roma
Symphonic Poems – Danse Macabre, La Jeunesse d’Hercule, Phaéton, Le Rouet d’Omphale*
La Foi – Three Symphonic Pictures**
Le Carnaval des Animaux***
Suite for Orchestra, Op.49****
A Night In Lisbon****
Spartacus Overture****
National Orchestra of ORTF
Marie-Claire Alain Organ
Jean Martinon Conductor
Orchestre de Paris*
Luben Yordanoff Violin
Pierre Dervaux Conductor
Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse**
Michel Plasson Conductor
CBSO***
Brenda Lucas Piano
John Ogden Piano
Anthony Moroney Flute
Hilary Robinson Cello
Louis Frémaux Conductor
Ensemble de Paris****
Jean-Jacques Kantorow Conductor
CDs 1-4 of Warner Classics 0190296746048
34 CDs Complete (not available as separate CDs)
Budget price
The Review
Camille Saint-Saëns observed quite early on that music just flowed out of him and this 34 CD set marking the centenary of his death proves the point, if for no other reason that while it is comprehensive in scope it still does not include everything – even with all the operas omitted.
There is enough here to satisfy even the most ardent of his devotees, though, and the recordings, mainly drawn from the Erato and HMV catalogues of the 1970s and historically from the first half of the twentieth century, are a judicious mixture of classic French performances and English ones from a time when his music was being rediscovered for my generation. To review the entire set in one go would be either too long to be readable or too truncated to be fair, so this appraisal will appear in chunks, subdivided by the categories in the set itself, beginning with the purely orchestral works.
Saint-Saëns started composing as a child and finished in his middle eighties, so was writing when Berlioz, Schumann and Mendelssohn were at their best and died when Stravinsky was all the rage in Paris and probably hanging out with Coco Chanel. The orchestral works are mostly nineteenth century and reflect his early training in the general vocabulary established by Schumann but then move into the territory of more wide-ranging style symphonic poems as his determination to differentiate Paris from the German school increased after Prussia’s attacks on France.
Four of his five symphonies were written in the 1850s, so in his teens and early twenties (two are unnumbered) and they fully deserve to be heard more often in performance. They occupy what one might call Burgundian territory – neither particularly French or German but firmly in the prevailing symphonic fashion; the comparable composer I keep thinking of is Ferdinand Raff, 13 years older than Saint-Saëns. The interpretations offered in the box by Jean Martinon, himself a superb composer, are those made in the early 1970s by the ORTF orchestra. Martinon had drilled them into quite the best in France at the time – I remember fondly watching him conduct when he visited the Royal Festival Hall – and though one might wish for a slightly richer string sound, the precision of rhythmic attack and Martinon’s gift to bring out wind detail and shape the melodies is a joy. I’d love to hear what someone like Jurowski would make of these works these days.
The Organ Symphony, listed usually as No. 3, so grand but written thirty years later, is a completely different beast and relates far more to the symphonic poems that were by then his stock in trade. In Martinon’s reading, made in the studio of Radio France, I love the lack of gaudy sensationalism. Marie-Claire Alain’s organ is balanced so that it startles but never overwhelms the orchestral textures, as so often happens when record companies are showing off its ‘greatest hits’ potential.
For me, the disc that contains most of the symphonic poems was a revelation. Forget the tiresome Danse Macabre, which the composer rightly suppressed in his lifetime, and listen to the three gentle but sumptuous movements of La Foi, given here by the Toulouse orchestra and Plasson in 1995, a work adapted from incidental music for a play of that name in 1908. I suspect that if the play’s title was dropped and the subtitle, Three Symphonic Pictures, was used instead, it might appeal more to contemporary orchestral directors; they would find the inclusion well worth it.
Young Hercules might be Greek myth but the music, nearly twenty minutes of it, is closest to Tchaikovsky, with strong similarities to Francesca da Rimini. Why is it almost never on concert programmes? The 1971 recording by the Orchestre de Paris has rather extreme stereo separation but has otherwise dated well. Phaéton, half the length but written first, is in much the same vein, almost a dress rehearsal. Omphale’s Spinning Wheel has some wonderfully delicate orchestral textures and again, Tchaikovsky comes to mind, though in 1872 it is more likely that he was learning from Saint-Saëns than the other way round.
The one UK orchestra in this section, the CBSO, was having a new lease of life under Frémaux and this recording of Carnival of the Animals was considered superb in 1971. The husband and wife piano team of John Ogden and Brenda Lucas integrate immaculately but it is the interpretative approach that makes it stand out still. They and Frémaux take a cue from the subtitle, A Grand Zoological Fantasy, realising that the humour is funniest if played straight, so that the patently witty movements (the elephants, persons with long ears and pianists) are portrayed with the same seriousness as the fish and the swan. This is still a version that is hard to better.
SM