Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 - 1921)
Symphony No.3 In C Minor (Organ Symphony), Opus 78
Le Rouet d'Omphale, Opus 31
Bacchanale from "Samson & Delilah", Opus 47
Camille Saint-Saëns lived a long life, composed a large amount of
music, and by the time of his death in 1921 at the age of 86 seemed a relic of a
distant age. As a young man he had earned the nick-name of the French
Mendelssohn. He found himself, in old age, in the world of composers such as
Ravel, Stravinsky and Schoenberg.
Saint-Saëns was born in Paris in 1835. His father, a clerk in the
Ministry of the Interior, died shortly after his son 's birth, and the boy was
brought up by his mother and her aunt, the latter giving him his first piano
lessons when he was two and a half. He showed exceptional ability and at the
age of ten appeared in a public concert at the Salle Pleyel, having already
learned by heart all the Beethoven sonatas.
In an otherwise distinguished enough career at the Conservatoire, where
he had composition lessons from Halevy and studied the organ with Bergist,
Saint-Saëns failed to win the Prix de Rome, but w rote an impressive series of
compositions. In common with many other French composers, he took an
appointment as an organist in Paris and was for nearly twenty years employed in
that capacity at the Madeleine.
For four years Saint-Saëns, from 1861 until 1865, taught at the Ecole
Niedermeyer and it was there that he met Gabriel Faurè, who was to remain his
close friend throughout his life. His marriage in 1875 was brief and unhappy
and lasted a mere six years, with his two children dying in infancy. The death
of his mother in 1888 proved a greater blow to his security, and he was
thereafter to spend a great deal of time travelling, particularly to Egypt and
to AIgeria. He died in Algiers in 1921.
Saint-Saëns was immensely gifted, both as a performer and as a
composer. Liszt, who heard him improvise at the Madeleine, described him as the
greatest living organist, while Hans von Buelow, who heard him read at sight at
the piano the score of Wagner's Siegfried declared him the greatest musical
mind of the time. As a pianist he performed principally his own music, avoiding
the inevitable drudgery of the mere virtuoso he might so easily have become.
The compositions of Saint-Saëns cover almost every possible genre of
music. He w rote for the theatre and for the church, composed songs, orchestral
music and chamber music, with works for the piano and for the organ. In style
he deserved the comparison with Mendelssohn, sharing with that composer an
ability in the handling of traditional forms and techniques and a gift for
orchestration.
The third and last of the numbered symphonies that Saint-Saëns wrote,
the so-called Organ Symphony, was
completed in 1886, the year of the famous private jeu d'esprit, Le carnaval des animaux. It was dedicated
to the memory of Franz Liszt, who died that year in Bayreuth. The two
movements of the work include the normal structure of a four-movement symphony,
with the use of cyclic thematic material, melodies or fragments of melodies
that recur and provide over-all unity, a technique used by Cesar Franck in his
own symphony, which he had started in the same year.
The first movement, after a slow introduction, leads to a theme of
Mendelssohnian character, followed by a second subject of a gentler cast. The
organ introduces a slow movement of sadder complexion, in which memories of the
cyclic theme recur, as it undergoes its Lisztian metamorphosis into something
still richer and stranger. A following section takes the place of a scherzo,
opening with an energetic string melody, and framing a more lyrical passage at
its heart. The final part of the symphony is again started by the organ,
introducing an orchestral fugato.
This last movement is of considerable variety, including a chorale,
that makes an early appearance in an unusual form, polyphonic writing and a
brief pastoral interlude, replaced by the massive climax of the whole symphony.
Le rouet d'Omphale
belongs to a group of earlier symphonic poems written in the 1870s that
includes Phaéton, the famous Danse macabre and La jounesse d'Hercule. The legend of the
Lydian queen Omphale involves the mythical hero Hercules, who was condemned by
Apollo to serve her in the guise of a woman, an episode in which some were to
find a moral, as the strongest of men was enslaved in this way. The symphonic
poem makes much of the sound of the spinning-wheel at which Omphale and her
maids worked.
The successful opera Samson &
Delilah was first staged in Weimar in 1877. The work had originally
been conceived as an oratorio, but proved too Wagnerian for French taste, so
that it was not to be seen in France until 1890, when there was a performance
at Rouen, followed seven months later by staging in Paris. The Bacchanale,
which might at first seem an inappropriate indulgence even for a Philistine,
provides a necessary divertissement in the biblical story.
Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava)
The Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava), the oldest symphonic
ensemble in Slovakia, was founded in 1929 at the instance of Milos Ruppeldt and
Oskar Nedbal, prominent personalities in the sphere of music. The orchestra was
first conducted by the Prague conductor František Dyk and in the course of the
past fifty years of its existence has worked under the batons of several
prominent Czech and Slovak conductors. Ondrej Lenard was appointed its
conductor in 1970 and in 1977 its conductor-in-chief. The orchestra has
recently given a number of successful concerts both at home and abroad, in West
and East Germany, Russia, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, and Great
Britain.
Stephen Gunzenhauser
The American conductor Stephen Gunzenhauser was educated in New York,
continuing his studies at Oberlin, at the Salzburg Mozarteum, at the New
England Conservatory and at Cologne State Conservatory. His period at the last
of these was the result of a Fulbright Scholarship, followed by an award from
the West German Government and a first prize in the conducting competition held
in the Spanish town of Santiago.
During the last two decades, Gunzenhauser has enjoyed a varied and
distinguished career, winning popularity in particular for his work with the
Delaware Symphony. an orchestra which he has recently conducted on an eight-concert
tour of Portugal. His other engagements have included appearances with
orchestras in Europe and America, from the RIAS Orchestra of Berlin, the
Hessischer Rundfunk Orchestra of Frankfurt and Dublin Radio Orchestra to the
Charlotte Orchestra of North Carolina, and orchestras in Victoria, B.C.,
Spokane and Knoxville.
For the Marco Polo label Stephen Gunzenhauser has recorded works by
Liadov, Glière and Rubinstein, and for NAXOS Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.5, Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Mozart's Violin Concertos Nos. 3 & 5.