Saint-Sa¿¿ns: Dances and Ballet Music in Bloomington, MN

The music of
Camille Saint-Saens
didn't fare well during the era of High Modernism, and for many years, it was only his bona fide audience hits that were heard. However, more and more of his music is showing up on recordings, and almost always, it reveals a composer whose melodic gift was rivaled only by
Mozart
's. Consider the mostly unknown works on this album; apart from the two excerpts from the opera
Samson et Dalila
, these are works that will be unknown even to French music enthusiasts. All are operatic excerpts except for the music from
Henry VIII
, taken from incidental music for
Shakespeare
's play. Those pieces, oddly broken up into two parts by excerpts from the opera
Parysatis
, are interesting indeed in how they show the ways
Saint-Saens
imagined English Renaissance music. Try the even more obscure music from the opera
Etienne Marcel
, all from a single scene entitled "The Night of St. John, Before Notre Dame." These are also neo-Renaissance pieces, all before neoclassicism was even a gleam in its founders' eyes, and they are irresistibly tuneful. Conductor
Jun Maerkl
is a talented interpreter of
, and here, he conveys the elegance of the music and brings a sense of how the composer worked out even the smallest details despite prolific creativity that allowed him to write buckets of music. There might be orchestras that are smoother in absolute terms than the
Residentie Orchestra den Haag
, but it is wonderful to have these performances, and they are unlikely to be surpassed any time soon. ~ James Manheim