Saint-saens: Piano Trios Nos. 1 And 2

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Cat No: 8550935

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099593526

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: SAINT-SAENS

Description
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) Piano Trio No.1 in F Major, Op. 18 Piano Trio No.2 in E Minor, Op. 92 Camille Saint-Saëns was, like Mozart and Mendelssohn, precocious in his musical talents, first shown after piano lessons from his great-aunt at the age of two and a half. He coupled with his musical interests a wide general enthusiasm for learning of all kinds, literary and scientific, and was, as a composer, to produce music of many genres during a career that spanned the second half of the nineteenth century and the first twenty-one years of the twentieth, starting in a period that knew Mendelssohn and continuing beyond the death of Debussy. Saint-Saëns was born in Paris in 1835, the son of a clerk in the French government service, who died shortly after the birth of his only child. He was cared for by his mother and her aunt, who gave him his first piano lessons. Thereafter he studied with Camille Stamaty, a pupil of Kalkbrenner and of Mendelssohn, and appeared in public concerts as a child, having, by the age of ten, memorised all the Beethoven piano sonatas. At the same time he showed an aptitude for and interest in a wide variety of subjects. In 1848 he entered the Conservatoire, studying the organ with Benoist and composition with Halevy, and continuing to show his gifts as a pianist and organist and as a composer. His intellectual curiosity led him to espouse the cause of contemporary music, as well as the revival of music by earlier composers. A member of the circle of Pauline Viardot, a valued friend, Saint-Saëns taught briefly at the newly established Ecole Niedermeyer, where his pupils included Gabriel Fauré, a musician with whom he established a close relationship. In 1871 he was instrumental in the foundation of the Société Nationale de Musique, with its aim of propagating French music, Ars Gallica. His great-aunt died in 1872 and three years later he contracted a marriage which came to an abrupt end six years later, after the earlier death of his two sons. He was left alone by the death of his mother in 1888 and spent much of his later life travelling, accompanied by his dog. By the time of his own death in 1921 he had to some extent outlived his reputation at home. In France this was the age of Les Six. Debussy was dead, Fauré was near the end of his life and Stravinsky had already, some eight years earlier, scandalized Paris with his Rite of Spring. Saint-Saëns continued to compose, although Ravel unkindly suggested that in war-time he might have been more productively employed. Abroad he retained his reputation. Once known as the French Mendelssohn, his music continued to appeal to audiences in much the same way as his predecessor's, for its clarity of texture and its attractive powers of invention, calculated to delight rather than to shock. Saint-Saëns wrote his Piano Trio in F major, Opus 18, in 1863 at a particularly successful period of his life, when he enjoyed at h
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