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Saint-Saens - Piano Concertos 3, 4 & 5 | BIS BIS2300

Saint-Saens - Piano Concertos 3, 4 & 5

£12.83

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Label: BIS

Cat No: BIS2300

Barcode: 7318599923000

Format: Hybrid SACD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Orchestral

Release Date: 3rd May 2019

Gramophone Editor's Choice

Contents

About

Composer, piano virtuoso, conductor, teacher – Camille Saint-Saëns was all of these things, but also a keen archaeologist, astronomer, botanist, historian, illustrator, poet, playwright… A seasoned traveller, he was the most famous French musician in his own lifetime, acclaimed in North and South America, the Middle East and across Europe. It is ironic, then, that his extensive and varied output isn’t better known today – except for a few works of which the most famous, Carnival of the Animals, is one Saint-Saëns himself had little affection for. Now often regarded as old-fashioned or even reactionary, we tend to forget that Saint-Saëns during his lifetime was sometimes heckled for the boldness of his works. Furthermore, he defended the music of the revolutionaries Wagner and Liszt, earned the admiration of such figures as Berlioz, Debussy and Ravel and – in 1908 – composed one of the first original scores for a film!

Jean-Jacques Kantorow and the Tapiola Sinfonietta have championed the music of Saint-Saëns on a series of acclaimed discs, and are now joined by the young Alexandre Kantorow – son of the conductor – for a survey of his works for piano and orchestra. In 1858, Saint-Saëns became the first major French composer to write a piano concerto, but on this first disc of two the Kantorows present the three last concertos. Composed over a period of almost 30 years (1868 –1896), these are highly individual works: Piano Concerto No.3 is a bold attempt to reconcile Classical form with a Lisztian pianistic brio, No.4 employs an unusual formal scheme in which themes are reused in a cyclic manner and, finally, the ‘Egyptian’ (No.5), named after the second movement, which in the composer’s own words describes ‘a sort of Eastern journey that goes all the way to the Far East’.

Reviews

It is no hardship to review yet another Saint-Saëns piano concerto recording when it is as good as this... I have rarely heard [the Fourth Concerto] delivered with such commanding ease and infectious delight. For further evidence of Kantorow’s skill, listen to the first few minutes of the Fifth Concerto and you’ll hear soufflé-light leggierissimo scale passages contrasted with fortissimo octaves of penetrating depth and weight.  Jeremy Nicholas
Gramophone June 2019

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