SAINT-SAËNS: Symphonic Poems & Le Carnaval des Animaux; Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila, Op. 47; L’Assassinat du duc de Guise, Op. 128 – Les Siècles/ François-Xavier Roth – Harmonia mundi HMM 902614 (2 CDs: 1:58:18) (8/25/23) [Distr. by PIAS] *****:
Recorded 1 April and 1 November 2021 – the centennial of the composer’s death – this ambitious enterprise from François-Xavier Roth and his selected, period-instrument ensemble Les Siècles addresses with athletic fervor the four tone-poems of Camille Saint-Saëns: Phaéton, Le Rouet d’Omphale, La Jeunesse d’Hercule, Danse macabre, the eternal La Carnaval des Animaux, and the first music ever composed for the cinema, the 1908 short, silent film, The Assassination of the Duke of Guise.
Collectors may well recall the visceral excitement generated by the 1956 release on CBS LP of the four Saint-Saëns with the New York Philharmonic led by Greek master Dimitri Mitropoulos (ML 5154). His wickedly rhythmic Danse macabre competed with the touted performance of Arturo Toscanini, while the string sonority in Phaéton soared with an erotic eloquence.
Disc 1 opens with the first of his poems on Greek myths, the 1873 Phaéton, Op. 39, the tale of destructive pride from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Phaéton’s mother had boasted to him that Apollo sired him, but Phaéton, skeptical, seizes the reins of Apollo’s sun-chariot, led by a team of flying horses. Having ignored the warning that only Apollo could manage the unruly beasts, Phaéton loses control of the flaming vehicle, which scorches the earth and evaporates the rivers of North Africa—this attributes the mythical cause for the desert climate of that region. Zeus intervenes before too much damage occurs, striking Phaéton down to earth with a deadly lightning bolt. A huge E-flat chord opens the narrative, and we hear the aerial, staccato gallop of Apollo’s steeds from the brilliant Les Siècles strings. Our protagonist’s theme evolves in five notes strewn in different patterns through the orchestra. A romantic melody suggests the spatial ecstasy of power, but the ineluctable gallop returns with a fugal, brass fanfare that heralds Phaéton’s catastrophic demise, again with the ff E-flat chord. What is left of Phaéton’s theme has become his funeral lament, a symbol of the price of youthful hubris.
Roth’s program continues with the 1877 La Jeunesse d;Hercule, Op. 50, based on the myth that the young hero faced a dilemma: either a path of seduction and pleasure, or the path of virtue. Hercules will opt for struggle and moral triumph, a vision of which appears through the flames of his funeral pyre. The slow introduction features muted violins and a seductive harp part, along with alluring woodwinds. The kettle drums announce the major, first theme, leading to a subsidiary tune for violins and winds. Flute and clarinet combine, then the harp, while the music builds in tension along principles established by Liszt. An Allegro in oriental colors ensues, the carnal, bacchanale option for the hero’s fate, but he rejects this for a chorale, in E-flat Major, of Wagnerian, moral fervor. Roth well captures the colorful flavor of this, Saint-Saëns’ last symphonic poem, but the piece lacks the dramatic flair of his other efforts in the genre.
With the first of the Saint-Saëns symphonic poems, Le Rouet d’Omphale, Op. 31 of 1831, we have another Hercules tale (via Victor Hugo), rather androgynous, in which Apollo has the hero in three years’ servitude to the Lydian queen Omphale, dressed as a woman and spinning thread on the eponymous spinning wheel. The diaphanous colors of the poem testify to the composer’s fascinating skill at orchestration, well learned from the art of Berlioz. A sonatina in construction, the piece evokes a groaning motif to exhibit the hero’s discomfort, a victory of feminine wiles over brute masculinity. A series of mocking woodwind motifs evoke the ironies of Hercules’ temporary exile to distaff labor. If Roth’s performance has a prior model in execution, it may well be with Sir Thomas Beecham.
From his 1872 mélodie based on a poem by Henri Cazalis, Saint-Saëns fashions one of his most enduring works, Danse macabre, Op. 47, with violinist François-Marie Drieux’s intoning his E string at a half-step lower to E-flat the Devil’s invitation to the dance, utilizing the augmented fourth as part of the Dies Irae from the Requiem Mass, as modeled by both Berlioz and Liszt. Roth whips his morbid forces into plastic, erotically fugal shape with the same energy and bombastic enthusiasm we witness on Youtube of his hearty realization of the Act III, Scene 2 Bacchanale from the composer’s 1877 grand opera Samson et Dalila. The oboes and clarinets of Les Siècles deserve honorable mention, as does the ensemble’s precision timpanist.
CD 2 features the popular 1886 Le Carnaval des Animaux, a work the composer deliberately had suppressed until after his death, despite its few performances while Saint-Saëns lived. Pianists (on Pleyel instruments) Jean Sugitani and Michael Ertzcheld join percussion Sylvain Bertrand and Pascal Auffret, harmonium, to fill out the sonorous choir, especially where the glistening Aquarium is concerned. The regal character of the Lion is never in doubt. The scratchiness of the Poules et Coqs irritates Rameau forever. Offenbach’s Can-Can must suffer the dissonant crawl of the Tortoise.Berlioz comes under fire from the bass fiddle, who transforms, Allegro pomposo, the Ballet des Sylphes into a pachyderm’s waltz. The Kangaroos have the pianists’ leaping obediently. The nasal braying of long-eared personages should remain fixed in the memory, as will the eternal cuckoo. Flute Marion Ralincourt makes the sojourn to the aviary a true flight of fancy. Czerny might have reservations about the scalar drudgery and wrong notes of our pianists. Rossini becomes familiar and fossilized, as Rosina’s aria from Il barbiere di Siviglia meets Danse macabre via the xylophone. The cellist for Le Cygne, Robin Michael, floats on a lovely pond via a copy of a Goffriller instrument from 1698. The Finale, a grand pageant, swirls in lively reminiscence as the cast of beasts passes by in dazzling Technicolor.
The industriously adventurous Saint-Saëns agreed to write incidental music for the brief, silent film directed by André Calmettes and Charles Le Bargy. Dramatist Henri Lavedan recreates the order of King Henri III to assassinate Henri I, Duke of Lorraine. Essentially, Saint-Saëns creates leitmotifs for individual character in the selected, six scenes, inflecting their emotive states. The premiere at the Salle Charras in Paris elicited the reviewer at the 17 November 1908 screening – the music directed by Fernand Leborne – to declare “the little gem of symphonic music” a “tour de force of art and learning.”
—Gary Lemco
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