Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns wrote music of classical clarity and Romantic colour: the Organ Symphony’s blazing finale, the glittering Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, the late Clarinet Sonata, and the song Clair de lune that still draws listeners into moonlight and memory.
French Romantic craft at full stretch. The Third Symphony thrives in organ transcription, its C major opening ferocious and its closing flourishes dazzling. Violinists take the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso for its brilliance and unforced line; horn players keep the Romance Op. 36 in the standard repertoire; clarinet and piano find late elegance in the Op. 167 Sonata. Two-piano Variations on a Beethoven theme and the mélodie Clair de lune show the same ear for proportion and colour. The writing stays lucid even when the surface turns virtuosic, which is why these pieces still sound fresh in recital and on record.
Compositions by Camille Saint-Saëns appear on
Porgy & Bess Fantasy: Music for Two Pianos
In the early 1980s two of Australia’s finest pianists joined forces in masterpieces of the piano-duet literature. The set draws on concert and studio sessions from a period when such collaborations were still readily captured.