Saint-Saëns
Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy, making his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. After leaving the post twenty years later, he was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in demand in Europe and the Americas.
As a young man, Saint-Saëns was enthusiastic for the most modern music of the day, particularly that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner, although his own compositions were generally within a conventional classical tradition. He was a scholar of musical history, and remained committed to the structures worked out by earlier French composers. This brought him into conflict in his later years with composers of the impressionist and dodecaphonic schools of music; although there were neoclassical elements in his music, foreshadowing works by Stravinsky and Les Six, he was often regarded as a reactionary in the decades around the time of his death.
Saint-Saëns held only one teaching post, at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse in Paris, and remained there for less than five years. It was nevertheless important in the development of French music: his students included Gabriel Fauré, among whose own later pupils was Maurice Ravel. Both of them were strongly influenced by Saint-Saëns, whom they revered as a genius.
Saint-Saëns
BEECHAM at the Royal Festival Hall, Volume 1: Haydn, Lalo, Debussy
BEECHAM at the Royal Festival Hall, Volume 2: Mendelssohn, Ghedini, Dvořák
BEECHAM at the Royal Festival Hall, Volume 3: Addison, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, Gounod
Recorded live in 1959
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
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ADDISON Ballet Suite, Carte Blanche
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7
SAINT-SAËNS Dance of the Priestesses (Samson & Delilah)
GOUNOD Juliet's Dream (Romeo and Juliet)
Recorded live in 1959
Total duration: 56:49
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 8
Shorter works by Bizet, Massenet, Rossini, Saint-Saëns, Sibelius
Recorded 1943
Total duration: 74:32
Seattle Symphony
conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
NICOLAI The Merry Wives of Windsor: Overture
ELGAR Serenade for Strings
HANDEL-BEECHAM Love in Bath: The Great Elopement
DELIUS The Walk to the Paradise Garden
J. STRAUSS II Voices of Spring
WAGNER Götterdämmerung: Siegfried’s Funeral March
SIBELIUS Pelléas et Mélisande Suite: The Death of Mélisande
MOZART Divertimento, K 131: Adagio
SCHUBERT Symphony No. 8, “Unfinished.”
TCHAIKOVSKY Serenade in C: Elegie
BERLIOZ Les Troyens: Trojan March
MOZART Symphony No. 31
HANDEL-BEECHAM Piano Concerto
CHABRIER España
MOZART The Impressario - Overture
SAINT-SAENS Omphale’s Spinning Wheel
BERLIOZ The Trojans - Royal Hunt and Storm
BERLIOZ Hungarian March
Recorded in 1945
Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor
Blue Network Symphony Orchestra
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HAYDN Symphony No. 102
MOZART The Impressario - Overture
SAINT-SAENS Omphale’s Spinning Wheel
BERLIOZ The Trojans - Royal Hunt and Storm
BERLIOZ Hungarian March
Live broadcast on ABC/Blue Network, 4pm, 28 April 1945
Total duration: 53:37
Blue Network Symphony Orchestra
SAINT-SAËNS Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso
SAINT-SAËNS Havanaise
Recorded in 1953
Total duration 18:44
Alfredo Campoli, violin
London Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Anatole Fistoulari
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