Camille SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921)
Symphony in A Major (ca. 1850)
Symphony No. 1 in E-Flat Major, Opus 2 (1853)
Symphony No. 2 in a minor, Opus 55 (1859)
Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège/Jean-Jacques Kantorow
rec. April and December 2019, and October 2020, Salle Philharmonique,
Liège, Belgium
Reviewed as downloaded with pdf booklet from
eclassical.com
BIS RECORDS BIS-2460
SACD
[75:36]
Camille Saint-Saëns, a Frenchman, enjoyed one of the longest and most
illustrious careers in music history. He lived for 86 years, and is
considered one of the most talented child-prodigies to have ever lived.
(Harold C. Schonberg, a published music historian as well as a former music
journalist for the New York Times, considered Saint-Saëns’ prodigious gifts
to be superior even to Mozart’s.) Not surprisingly for a child prodigy,
Saint-Saëns was well-known in the music community even before the end of
his teen years.
His long life-span at this precise point in history has ultimately made
Saint-Saëns something of a conundrum in relation to his fellow composers.
Early in his career, he was enthusiastically supportive of the latest
music, including the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, as well as the
early operas of Richard Wagner and the programmatic symphonic poems of
Franz Liszt.
As the years went by, however, he began developing a belief that there
needed to be an identifiable school of French composition to offset the
overriding influence that Wagner’s post-Tristan free tonality was having on
numerous of European composers. As a result, during the latter part of the
19th Century, he began adopting a more conservative standpoint,
and came to be viewed as one of the spokesmen for the “traditionalists” (as
opposed to the Wagnerian-minded “progressives”).
Especially with the appearance of such “shocking” pieces as Richard
Strauss’ Salome, Saint-Saëns could be counted on to issue public
statements such as this one: “I would say that when they try to get works
of art out of the realm of art, it means getting them into the realm of
madness. Richard Strauss is now showing us the way.” Upon hearing
Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps for the first time, Saint-Saëns
expressed the firm opinion that Stravinsky was “clearly insane”.
So he started his musical career being aligned with the cutting-edge
modernists (as they were seen at the time), and wound up, in the end,
decrying the damage, as he saw it, that the 20th-Century
modernists were then doing to his beloved art form.
Saint-Saëns was a highly-skilled compositional artisan in numerous genres,
equally at ease with chamber or larger-scale orchestra music. His
orchestral compositions include several piano concerti, symphonic poems
(such as Danse Macabre), operas (including Samson et Dalila), and symphonies, of which the most famous is
his 3rd Symphony, the “Organ” Symphony.
On this album, Jean-Jacques Kantorow and the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal
de Liège have given us three of Saint-Saëns’ five symphonies, the 1st and 2nd Symphonies, and the “Symphony in A Major”.
(The two remaining symphonies are scheduled for release by the same
performers less than a month after this review’s writing.) BIS Records
offers the album as a hybrid SACD or as a download in multiple available
formats. For this review, I listened to the multi-channel surround sound
download.
The three symphonies here were all written within ten years of each other,
as can be seen in the review header information at the top of this review.
Saint-Saëns, while clearly an excellent musical craftsman, suffered from
the same malady that often afflicts child prodigies, that being a staunchly
conservative style in writing. As talented as he was, Saint-Saëns cannot be
considered an innovator on the level of a Beethoven, a Wagner, or a
Stravinsky by any means. Indeed, it is sadly rare for any child prodigy who
begins their public life while still in their childhood to have any sort of
pioneering influence on the development of musical composition.
These three symphonies are no exception. As I was listening, there were
numerous moments where the thought occurred to me that, “This sounds like
Mendelssohn”, or “That sounds like Schumann,” or even, “This reminds me of
Beethoven”. That does not mean, however, that they are not enjoyable to
listen to, by any means.
None of this is to be taken as critical of Saint-Saëns’ music in any way;
it is only illustrative of the conservative nature of his writing. There
are an equal number of moments that are just as striking for their
melodic/expressive beauty or for excitingly un-bridled energy (on a
Mendelssohnian level, not a Mahlerian level, just to be clear). Like
Mendelssohn before him, Saint-Saëns had a gift for melody, and knew how to
build formal structures that are easy to follow and that make the most of
his thematic/melodic material.
There are also plenty of sections, for example, where I noticed the
woodwinds playing passages with finger-work and articulative skills that
would make excellent material for an orchestra audition. The rest of the
orchestra has to do a fair amount of hard work as well, so there are plenty
of virtuosic, exciting moments in these symphonies. While not offering the
same level of deep profundity as one might find in a Mahler symphony or a
Richard Strauss opera, this music is, nevertheless, quite enjoyable and, in
the hands of the right performers, just plain fun to listen to.
I have to say that, in the case of Jean-Jacque Kantorow and the Orchestre
Philharmonique Royal de Liège, this music is most assuredly in the right
hands. The orchestra’s skill and polish is exemplary, with the woodwinds
especially acquitting themselves most impressively in the passages I
previously mentioned as making good orchestra audition material.
As is always the case in my experience with BIS Records, the engineering
and sound-quality are flawless, and give us the best seat in the house.
Recorded in the Salle Philharmonique, the orchestra’s home venue, and the
same location where John Neschling recorded several excellent Respighi
albums with the same orchestra on previous occasions (also on BIS Records),
Saint-Saëns’ music is given what seems to be the best possible
presentation. The booklet notes, by Jean-Pascal Vachon, give us an
enjoyably characterized historical background for these three symphonies as
well as providing a well-informed analytical discussion of the music’s
structure.
If you are looking to expand your selections of Saint-Saëns’ music in your
library, then this album would be an excellent step in accomplishing that.
David Phipps
