More of the music of Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

• You’ll find outstanding Shootout Winning sound throughout this original RCA Victrola Stereo pressing
• It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that most of our classical records, even the mintiest ones, cannot quite manage
• One of the best violin recordings we offer – the rich, textured sheen of the strings is clearly evident throughout these pieces
• The sound is big and rich and ALIVE with pyrotechnic fireworks on side one – if you want to demonstrate to a novice listener why modern recordings are unsatisfactory, all you have to do is play this record for them
• The highlight for us on a collection like this is always going to be The Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, “one of Saint-Saëns’ few genuine showpieces.”

The violin here is superb — rich, smooth, clear, resolving. What sets the truly killer pressings apart is the depth, width and three-dimensional quality of the sound. The Tubey Magical richness is to die for.

Big space, a solid bottom, and plenty of dynamic energy are strongly in evidence throughout. Zero smear, high-rez transparency, tremendous dynamics, a violin that is present and solid — it takes the sound of this recording beyond what we thought was possible.

The full range of colors of the orchestra are here presented (on side one; side two is simply violin and piano) with remarkable clarity, dynamic contrast, spaciousness, sweetness, and timbral accuracy. If you want to demonstrate to a novice listener why modern recordings are unsatisfactory, all you have to do is play this record for them. No CD ever sounded like this.

The richness of the strings is on display for fans of the classical Golden Age.

It’s practically impossible to hear that kind of string sound on any recording made in the last thirty years. It may be a lost art but as long as we have these wonderful vintage pressings to play it’s an art that is not lost on us.

I don’t think the RCA engineers could have cut this record much better — it has all the stereo magic one could ask for, as well as the clarity and presence that are missing from so many other vintage Golden Age records.

This vintage RCA Victrola pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What the Best Sides Of VICS 1058 Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1959
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Copies with rich lower mids and nice extension up top did the best in our shootout, assuming they weren’t veiled or smeary of course. So many things can go wrong on a record! We know, we’ve heard them all.

Top end extension is critical to the sound of the best copies. Lots of old records (and new ones) have no real top end; consequently, the studio or stage will be missing much of its natural air and space, and instruments will lack their full complement of harmonic information.

Tube smear is common to most vintage pressings and this is no exception. The copies that tend to do the best in a shootout will have the least (or none), yet are full-bodied, tubey and rich.

What We’re Listening For On VICS 1058

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Chausson / Poème, Op. 25
Saint-Saëns / Introduction And Rondo Capriccio, Op. 28

Side Two

Leclair / Sonata No. 3 In D
Locatelli / Sonata In F Minor (Au Tombeau)

Review

Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, for violin & orchestra

Description by John Palmer

The Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, Op. 28 (1863), is one of Saint-Saëns’ few genuine showpieces. It was composed for his friend, the virtuoso violinist Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908), for whom he had already written the Violin Concerto in A major, Op. 28 (1859), and for whom he would eventually create the Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61 (1880). Whereas the Op. 28 Violin Concerto was written when the violinist was only 15 years of age, the Introduction and Rondo capriccioso is deliberately challenging — a testimony to the mature master’s technique. Sarasate’s frequent programming of the work did a great deal for its popularity in the years after its publication (1870); its appeal was wide enough, in fact, that both George Bizet and Claude Debussy made arrangements of it — the former for violin and piano, and the latter for piano, four hands.

As one would expect from the title, the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso begins with a slow section, marked Andante malinconico and characterized by a plaintive falling leap and rising arpeggio. Becoming gradually more animated, the introduction culminates in a scintillating mini-cadenza that leads into the Rondo proper (Allegro ma non troppo). When the violin enters, it states a theme that has a Spanish flavor, stemming from syncopation and chromatic inflections.

The melody spins out into wild arpeggios and gigantic leaps before the orchestra begins a bridge to the contrasting theme, marked con morbidezza. This lyric melody is especially entrancing because it is in 2/4 time, played simultaneously with the continuing 6/8 time of the orchestra. The Rondo theme returns quietly in the solo violin before an orchestral outburst that is a reprise of the earlier bridge passage. The oboe takes the final statement of the rondo theme, which becomes fragmented and developed until the beginning of the brilliant coda, which is mainly a showcase for Sarasate’s technical ability.

Poeme

Description by Adrian Corleonis

On being asked by his friend, the renowned Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, for a violin concerto, Chausson dithered. The demands implied by the form, coupled with his high seriousness, loomed oppressively just as he was entering a new phase of freedom, fluency, and aureate fancy.

It has been suggested by Chausson’s biographer, Jean Gallois, that the Poème — with which he eventually answered Ysaÿe’s request — was prompted by a Turgenev tale of jealousy and death in which the novelist’s thwarted passion for the French mezzo-soprano, Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), is transposed into a fabulous Renaissance setting fraught with a magic potion, a violin whose music ravishes the soul, and a lover returned from the legendary orient.

Chausson knew and frequently entertained Mme. Viardot — she who had created the role of Fidès in Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète, who was an accomplished composer, painter, and writer, and upon whom Berlioz in his last decade had a lingering crush — and her husband. Thus the elements of what might have been the strangest of grand operas were in place.

It is a mark of Chausson’s genius that he eschewed the commonplaces of narrative to transmute those elements into a seamlessly compelling work for violin and orchestra — for the Poème is not program music. Rather, its high fantasy — superbly sustained — relies upon deftly dovetailed but clearly distinguished episodes, thematically linked.

Lento e misterioso, a harmonically rich introduction, rippled with thematic premonitions, immediately casts forth an enveloping aura of the fantastic, exalted, and exquisite, before the solo violin enters with a slow, elegiacally beguiling, doubly arched melody, echoed by the orchestra in a sensuous chorale.

The violin answers with a solo variation in which the melody is accompanied by rapid scale and arpeggio figures, punctuated by frequent double stops, to magical effect. The orchestra responds with an extended Animato shimmer which the effusively varied violin theme seems to mesmerize as it soars aloft in ever more ecstatic flights.

In a Molto animato gasp, the orchestra lunges over the theme’s contours to begin a hectically syncopated accompaniment to the violin’s riveting sorcery in rapid thirds, fourths, and sixths. For a brief, hesitating moment, passion seems exhausted. With a triplet-coiled ascent of three octaves, the violin rouses the orchestra, which responds again with the theme’s chorale-like enunciation as it is slowly enchanted into another spate of enraptured shimmer over which the violin, with a lacing, lashing, feverishly entrancing new melody, brings all to a sudden climax.

The chorale returns, vehement but giving way to weary finality as the violin croons and surges aloft to sink in chains of trills, spent, to a sumptuous cadence.

Saint-Saens

Artist Biography – Camille Saint-Saens

by Robert Cummings Camille Saint-Saëns was something of an anomaly among French composers of the nineteenth century in that he wrote in virtually all genres, including opera, symphonies, concertos, songs, sacred and secular choral music, solo piano, and chamber music.

He was generally not a pioneer, though he did help to revive some earlier and largely forgotten dance forms, like the bourée and gavotte. He was a conservative who wrote many popular scores scattered throughout the various genres: the Piano Concerto No. 2, Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”), the symphonic poem Danse macabre, the opera Samson et Dalila, and probably his most widely performed work, The Carnival of The Animals. While he remained a composer closely tied to tradition and traditional forms in his later years, he did develop a more arid style, less colorful and, in the end, less appealing. He was also a poet and playwright of some distinction.

Saint-Saëns was born in Paris on October 9, 1835. He was one of the most precocious musicians ever, beginning piano lessons with his aunt at two-and-a-half and composing his first work at three. At age seven he studied composition with Pierre Maledin. When he was ten, he gave a concert that included Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, Mozart’s B flat Concerto, K. 460, along with works by Bach, Handel, and Hummel. In his academic studies, he displayed the same genius, learning languages and advanced mathematics with ease and celerity. He would also develop keen, lifelong interests in geology and astronomy.

In 1848, he entered the Paris Conservatory and studied organ and composition, the latter with Halévy. By his early twenties, following the composition of two symphonies, he had won the admiration and support of Berlioz, Liszt, Gounod, Rossini, and other notable figures. From 1853 to 1876, he held church organist posts; he also taught at the École Niedermeyer (1861-1865). He composed much throughout his early years, turning out the 1853 Symphony in F (“Urbs Roma”), a Mass (1855) and several concertos, including the popular second, for piano (1868).

In 1875, Saint-Saëns married the 19-year-old Marie Truffot, bringing on perhaps the saddest chapter in his life. The union produced two children who died within six weeks of each other, one from a four-story fall. The marriage ended in 1881. Oddly, this dark period in his life produced some of his most popular works, including Danse macabre (1875) and Samson et Dalila (1878). After the tragic events of his marriage, Saint-Saëns developed a fondness for Fauré and his family, acting as a second father to Fauré’s children.

But he also remained very close to his mother, who had opposed his marriage. When she died in 1888, the composer fell into a deep depression, even contemplating suicide for a time. He did much travel in the years that followed and developed an interest in Algeria and Egypt, which eventually inspired him to write Africa (1891) and his Piano Concerto No. 5, the “Egyptian”. He also turned out works unrelated to exotic places, such as his popular and most enduring serious composition, the Symphony No. 3.

Curiously, after 1890, Saint-Saëns’ music was regarded with some condescension in his homeland, while in England and the United States he was hailed as France’s greatest living composer well into the twentieth century. Saint-Saëns experienced an especially triumphant concert tour when he visited the U.S. in 1915. In the last two decades of his life, he remained attached to his dogs and was largely a loner. He died in Algeria on December 16, 1921.

Chausson

Artist Biography – Ernest Chausson

by Rovi Staff If Marcel Proust had written music, it might have sounded something like Ernest Chausson’s: intensely passionate, yet rarely given to grand gestures. The effectiveness of Chausson’s ardent, even erotic, musical language derives largely from the slithery chromatic style the composer inherited from his most important teacher, César Franck.

Not a prolific composer, Chausson died in 1899, at the age of 44, from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident. Chausson’s death silenced the most distinctive voice in French music in the generation immediately preceding Debussy’s; indeed, Chausson’s music forms an elegant, if swaying, bridge between Franck’s lush, Wagnerian Romanticism and the sensuous Impressionist language of Debussy.

Chausson came from a well-to-do family; in fact, comfortable circumstances throughout his entire life made it unnecessary for him to pursue a living as a musician. Although interested in music from a young age, Chausson pursued law studies at his father’s behest. In 1877, he was sworn in as a lawyer in Paris; in the same year, he wrote his first work, the unpublished song Lilas.

The impulse to devote himself to composition was sparked in 1879, when he attended a performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in Munich and met there the sometime Wagner disciple Vincent d’Indy. Chausson entered the Paris Conservatory in the following year and began studies with Jules Massenet; his formal musical education was rounded out by private study with Franck. Chausson’s talent flowered in short order; a number of even his earliest published works — especially the song set Seven Melodies, Op. 2 (1879-1882) — have long been regarded as small masterpieces.

As secretary of the Société Nationale de Musique (an organization founded by Saint-Saëns and others to promote the performance of French instrumental music) from 1886, Chausson became a full-fledged member of the Parisian musical community. His salon became a regular meeting place for literary and musical notables includeing Mallarmé, Debussy, Albéniz, pianist Alfred Cortot, and violinist/composer Eugène Ysaÿe.

A prolific composer of songs, Chausson also composed works for voice and orchestra, choral music, and several operas. He is best known, however, for his chamber music — especially the Concerto for piano, violin, and string quartet, Op. 21 (1889-1891), and the Piano Quartet, Op. 30 (1897) — and for imaginative orchestral works like the Symphony in B flat major, Op. 20 (1889-1890), and the Poème for violin and orchestra, Op. 25 (1896).