Saint-Saëns - Chamber Music - Hyperion: CDA67431-2 - 2 CDs or download

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Saint-Seëns in full vigour and mastery - a wonderful pair of discs — BBC Music Magazine, 1st July 2008 More…

Release Date: 2nd May 2005
Catalogue No: CDA67431-2
Label: Hyperion
Length: 2 hours 13 minutes

BBC Music Magazine

July 2005

Chamber Choice
Presto Favourites

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Saint-Saëns: Septet in E flat major, Op. 65

Work length16:35

$4.40

$6.00

$6.20

The Nash Ensemble

I. Préambule: Allegro moderato – Più allegro

Track length4:01

$1.10

$1.50

$1.55

II. Menuet: Tempo di minuetto moderato

Track length4:17

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III. Intermède: Andante

Track length4:23

$1.10

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IV. Gavotte et Final: Allegro non troppo – Animato

Track length3:54

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$1.55

Saint-Saëns: Tarantelle in A minor, Op. 6

Work length6:25

$1.10

$1.50

$1.55

The Nash Ensemble

Saint-Saëns: Bassoon Sonata in G major, Op. 168

Work length12:07

$3.30

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$4.65

The Nash Ensemble

I. Allegretto moderato

Track length3:01

$1.10

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II. Allegro scherzando

Track length3:45

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III. Molto adagio – Allegro moderato

Track length5:21

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Saint-Saëns: Piano Quartet in B flat major, Op. 41

Work length29:50

$4.40

$6.00

$7.70

The Nash Ensemble

I. Allegretto

Track length7:18

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$2.30

II. Andante maestoso ma con moto

Track length6:36

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III. Poco allegro più tosto moderato

Track length6:01

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IV. Allegro

Track length9:55

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Saint-Saëns: Piano Quintet in A minor Op. 14

Work length30:34

$4.40

$6.00

$7.70

The Nash Ensemble

I. Allegro moderato e maestoso

Track length10:54

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II. Andante sostenuto

Track length6:45

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III. Presto

Track length4:59

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IV. Allegro assai, ma tranquillo

Track length7:56

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Saint-Saëns: Oboe Sonata in D major Op. 166

Work length11:08

$3.30

$4.50

$4.65

The Nash Ensemble

I. Andantino

Track length3:28

$1.10

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$1.55

II. Allegretto

Track length5:10

$1.10

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$1.55

III. Molto allegro

Track length2:30

$1.10

$1.50

$1.55

Saint-Saëns: Clarinet Sonata in E flat major, Op. 167

Work length15:58

$4.40

$6.00

$6.20

The Nash Ensemble

I. Allegretto

Track length4:22

$1.10

$1.50

$1.55

II. Allegro animato

Track length2:11

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III. Lento

Track length4:22

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IV. Molto allegro – Allegretto

Track length5:03

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Saint-Saëns: Caprice sur des airs danois et russes, Op. 79

Work length10:51

$1.10

$1.50

$2.30

The Nash Ensemble

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Favourites, Camille Saint-Saëns

James explores the music of French composer Camille Saint-Saëns and chooses some of his favourite recordings.

This exciting new double album from The Nash Ensemble presents an enchanting programme of chamber music by Camille Saint-Saens, that quintessential figure of nineteenth-century French music-making. At the heart of the set come the Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet, composed in 1875 and 1855, respectively. The quintet exudes a youthful confidence and swagger, the piano part leading the way, while the quartet quickly established itself as a staple of the repertory. Saint-Saens was a passionnate promoter of his own music being all too aware that the name of a contemporary composer on a concert bill represented the kiss of death and brought about many performances of his own works (and those of his contemporaries, establishing the Societe Nationale de Musique in 1871 for this purpose). One result of this passion for which we must be especially grateful was that Saint-Saens frequently wrote for the forces available, and this set opens with a rare septet for trumpet, string quintet and piano (the result of a playful commission from a chamber music society known as La Trompette), a jaunty work embracing seventeenth-century dance forms within a neoclassical style (perhaps fortunately, the composer appears never to have fulfilled his original promise to the society to compose a piece for guitar and thirteen trombones). In the last year of his life Saint-Saens set out to compose sonatas for each of the main woodwind instruments and piano. Those for cor anglais and flute were never written, but the sonatas for oboe, bassoon and clarinet here join with a tarantella (for flute, clarinet and piano) and a caprice (delightfully combining Danish and Russian themes and the sonorities of flute, oboe, clarinet and piano) to conclude the programme.

Reviews

1st July 2008

Saint-Seëns in full vigour and mastery - a wonderful pair of discs

2010

Saint-Saëns's chamber music fares better in the concert hall than the recording studio, perhaps because musicians tend to listen less to academic name-calling ('conservative', 'too prolific') than to the music itself. The three late wind sonatas in particular have received far fewer recordings than their status as repertoire staples deserves.
Try the kinky-Baroque first movement of the Oboe Sonata, jauntily phrased by Gareth Hulse, or the animato second of the Clarinet Sonata, garbed in rich Mozartian cloth by Richard Hosford.
The Bassoon Sonata is notable for its fresh and gentle wit and skirting of cliché: Ursula Leveaux does it proud, with especially luscious tone in the opening Allegretto.
Surprises are fewer in the earlier works, but none is less than,'finely put together' to echo Ravel's assessment. Hummability quotient is high in the Piano Quartet and Quintet, and off the scale in the Septet. The late Lionel Salter used to complain in Gramophone that recordings of the Septet tend to sound like a trumpet concerto; not this one. If you employ hit artists like Maurice André they will tend to hog the microphone but, happily, Mark David is a more sensitive soul who's fully imbibed the Nash's joyous spirit of corporate music-making, and Hyperion's engineers have placed him at a respectable distance. If anything it's Ian Brown's piano that takes centre-stage, and that's no bad thing, except in the extensive fugal finales to the Piano Quartet and Quintet where Saint-Saëns, most unusually, seems to over-run himself. The Caprice and Tarantelle, for all Philippa Davies's sparkling contributions, perhaps bear fewer repetitions, but the set is really sheer delight: let's hear it for imaginative conservatism.

This 2-CD set of chamber music performed by the Nash Ensemble gets off to a great start with a poised, expertly-balanced performance of the Septet, and goes on to include spirited, characterful accounts of the sonatas for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon, as well as the Piano Quartet in B flat and Piano Quintet in A minor.

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Saint-Saëns - Chamber Music

2 CDs

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Favourites, Camille Saint-Saëns

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