Saint Saëns - December 2021, July 2011

[3rd Viennese School]

mvt 2 of symphony no.3 is good! So good it was on the testcard.
(Channnel 4)

3VS

[ardcarp]

Just a few ramblings about S-S.


1. Samson as pronounced in French sounds almost the same as Saint-Saens!

I remember being profoundly disappointed by Samson et Dalila.

2. I was quite charmed by the short extract from Samson and Delila today; beautifully written, though wholly in the 'Germanic' tradition.

As for The Chord at the start of the finale, I well remember how it thrilled me as a teen

3. Dame Gillian Weir was on Woman's Hour the other day, and was rightly announced as one of the most famous organists in the world. They played a very short extract from The Organ Symphony...the start of the finale with 'The Chords'. Not sure they really showed off her world-class status! Mrs Ardcarp said, "I could do that...."

[Op. XXXIX]

[Cooper] suggests that much of the composer's best work appeared in the 1870s and includes most of the symphonic poems, Samson and Delilah (how many people know this opera in its entirety?)...

I've never seen it (a real slap-up production ought to be a great show), but I have worked my way through the Vickers recording. Some very fine music, indeed.

Wiki lists 12 other operas. One occasionally encounters a reference to Henry VIII, but never any of the others. Why are they so neglected? Is the music impossibly dated, are they -like Meyerbeer's- expensive to mount, are the libretti beyond salvage? Any ideas? I've never heard a note of these operas.

[Roslynmuse]

@ Op XXXIX - no, I meant viscous as in syrupy. The Munch recording was the one I got to know it from too. Re Samson et Dalila - the Vickers recording is the one I know too. I'm afraid it it did nothing for me - although I used to listen to the Bacchanale over and over as a young teen and I still enjoy the memory of liking that extract!

The Urbs Roma Symphony extract yesterday seemed to me to anticpate some of the British Light Music we had such a lot of the other week - a sort of Franco-Prussian Vivian Ellis (catchy tune over chromatic Wagner dotted rhythm bass line). The Requiem extract today looked back to the Requiem of Cherubini, I thought.

Dodgy librettos shouldn't prevent an opera production if an opera's music is worth salvaging. Chabrier's Le roi malgre lui is an oft-quoted case in point. The only other S-S opera apart from S & D and Henri VIII to have been recorded in one called Helene - don't know that either. I have an ancient vocal score of one called L'Ancêtre. It looks very dull - but who knows, in the right hands...

[ardcarp]

There were some lovely examples of S-S in exotic (oriental and Spamish) mode today. It was even hinted (though I don't know on what grounds) that he might have tried some 'substances' whilst in Algeria. One is left wishing he had been able to throw off at least some of the shackles of Austro-Germanic musical language and maybe to have beaten Debussy to a new sound-world.

[gradus]

Lovely to hear the Havanaise today, S-S certainly had a fine lyric gift.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

this may be of interest from back in 2004 when Steven Isserlis was championing S-S

[Op. XXXIX]

I was forgetting that piece! I can take the slow movement, viscous as it is, but once we hit The Chord at the start of the finale we are on compositional auto-pilot.

Funny, just now listening to the Munch recording, I do not see the 'auto-pilot' at all. Horses for courses, or whatever they say?

[Serial_Apologist]

Here we are again - time to maybe revise opinions on a composer I've always placed way down on my listening itinerary, as he did set important agendas, giving Fauré a leg-up, and would, surprisingly maybe, influence later composers - Poulenc being one - with whose aesthetic he would be out of sympathy.

This morning's programme offered good examples of his superficial brilliance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012gl0

This is not a repeat of an earlier series, by the way.

[Nick Armstrong]

This is not a repeat of an earlier series, by the way.

Shall I amend the thread heading then, are we sure?

[Serial_Apologist]

Shall I amend the thread heading then, are we sure?

Yes please, if you would Nick. I'm pretty sure, although it probably wouldn't really matter either way.

[ardcarp]

An uncritical post this (unusual for me) but I really, really enjoyed this week's Saint-Saëns. There was much to learn...especially about the extent of his fame in France and elsewhere...and about his sojourns with dogs in North Africa. Thanks CotW.

[Nick Armstrong]

An uncritical post this (unusual for me) but I really, really enjoyed this week's Saint-Saëns. There was much to learn...especially about the extent of his fame in France and elsewhere...and about his sojourns with dogs in North Africa. Thanks CotW.

Same here. I’ve appreciated increasingly his lesser known works, and played in a few, over recent years but realised this week how little I knew about him. Especially (to my shame) that in his youth he was one of the great organists of his day - for some reason, I’d never thought of him as part of that great French tradition (despite the symphony).

[gurnemanz]

I've only quite recently enjoyed getting to know the songs of Saint Saëns, mainly via François Le Roux and Graham Johnson on Hyperion (well priced here), a chronological survey from across his long life. I'm grateful to CotW on Thursday for playing Rêverie, tenor Yann Beuron with Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana/Markus Poschner. I did not know any of his orchestrated songs and having listened to some of the album online, I am now considering buying it.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Same here. I’ve appreciated increasingly his lesser known works, and played in a few, over recent years but realised this week how little I knew about him. Especially (to my shame) that in his youth he was one of the great organists of his day - for some reason, I’d never thought of him as part of that great French tradition (despite the symphony).

There’s quite an intriguing doc about Saint Saëns on Arte at the moment. It’s in French with subtitles . It focuses on his mysterious disappearances . Oddly it uses cartoons to tell the story . There’s no commentary and it’s full of well-informed interview. CSS was a decidedly odd man but I rather admire his complete indifference to the world of self promotion.