Camille Saint-Saëns’s long musical life began in the first half of the 19th century as extraordinary child-prodigy – he wrote his first composition aged three – and ended in 1921 as reactionary grand-old-man of French music. He had the distinction being mocked by Berlioz at one end of his career (as a composer who ‘knows everything, but lacks inexperience’) and dismissed by Debussy at the other (as ‘the musician of tradition’).
This concert amply demonstrates Saint-Saëns’s gift for dazzling orchestral narrative and memorable tunes, opening with the symphonic poem Phaéton, and closing with the excitement and grandeur of the ‘Organ’ Symphony. In between, Steven Isserlis is the soloist in the first Cello Concerto, and in the ever-popular Danse macabre OAE concertmaster Matthew Truscott plays devilish violin to the rattling skeleton bones of the xylophone.
Saint-Saëns: Phaéton, Op. 39
Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor. Op. 33
Saint-Saëns: Danse macabre, Op. 40
Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78 (‘Organ’)
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Maxim Emelyanychev, conductor
Steven Isserlis, cello
RTÉ lyric fm, Tuesday 30th May, 1pm-4pm
