With all the compositional trends of the past century,
Camille Saint-Saëns’ popularity has wavered, and his esteem
among musicologists has waned. His tuneful craftsmanship, and what you
might call a blend of French elegance and emotion with Germanic formal
rigor, saw him “left behind” even in his own time, as Debussy
and Ravel passed him by. Even so, Saint-Saëns is still exceptional
at what he does, and I’m thankful for the recent advocacy by Naxos
of the composer’s chamber music. First we got the
late
woodwind sonatas, then the
string
quartets and a piano quintet (April 2013
Recording
of the Month), and now the first volume of his complete violin music.
The music’s almost all first-rate. The first
Violin Sonata,
in D minor, is concise and carefully built, with no dead spots. Like
the
Organ Symphony, each set of two movements is paired and proceeds
continuously. The material’s all up to the standard you’d
expect from the violin concertos. At the other end of the CD is
Triptyque,
a very late piece in three movements which, in its central “Vision
congolaise”, brings us the kind of grin-inducing exoticism which
one also finds in the “Egyptian” piano concerto.
In between we have a lot of shorter works, from the unpublished
L’air
de la pendule, a petite melody inscribed on a clock as a gift to
the King of Belgium, to two late and wonderful elegies. Fear not: the
programming of a berceuse and two elegies all in a row does not result
in a dull moment, unless you’re the kind of person who also can’t
listen to more than three Chopin nocturnes. And the
Romance in D
flat, originally written for flute and orchestra, doesn’t
sound like an arrangement; the kind of gently flowing accompaniment
that underpins the “Swan” is paired with a melody that’s
only less memorable because almost every melody is less memorable than
the swan’s.
This is slated to be the first traversal of Saint-Saëns’
violin music since Philippe Graffin recorded a couple discs on Hyperion
and Helios over a decade ago. Luckily for Naxos - and for us - Fanny
Clamagirand is an excellent young violinist whose sweet tone, gentle
vibrato, and gift for lyrical expression make her ideal for this romantic
repertoire. Vanya Cohen’s accompaniments shine, too, and highlight
the inventive ways that Saint-Saëns uses his main instrument. The
intimate sound, featuring a beautifully-rendered violin, only seals
the deal. If you liked Fanny Clamagirand’s excellent Saint-Saëns
concertos album - my colleague Byzantion agrees she’s “
ideal
for this kind of music” - this is a natural progression; if
not, grab them both.
Brian Reinhart
