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.

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