Samuel Jones is a sensitive musician with great imagination, and he is a real craftsman. These works should be part of the core of the great American repertoire. Of his Symphony No. 3, Jones writes: "I wanted to capture in music that magical moment."

S. ARNOLD Overtures: in B?, op. 8/1; in D, op. 8/2; in F, op. 8/3; in D, op. 8/4; in G, op. 8/5; in D, op. 8/6. Macbeth: Incidental Music. Polly: Overture ? Kevin Mallon, cond; Toronto Camerata ? NAXOS 8557484 (76:27)


Even though his name is lost to all but musicologists and then only a precious few of them, Samuel Arnold (1740?1802) was a gifted musician, highly respected theater composer, conductor, and an outstanding musical historian in Georgian England.


Arnold was the son of Thomas Arnold and probably Princess Amelia, a student of Handel. Arnold studied with Bernard Gates, a pupil of John Blow, and from the mid 1760s was active as a composer for the summer concerts at London?s pleasure gardens. By 1769, Arnold?s struggle to stay afloat financially ended abruptly when he came face-to-face with financial ruin as the result of a £10,000 embezzlement. However, the resourceful Arnold rekindled his relationship with the London theaters in 1777, when George Colman the Elder secured Arnold?s talents as house composer for the Little Theater in the Haymarket. Additional positions included posts as organist at the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey and head of the Academy of Ancient Music. In 1786, Arnold commenced editing a complete edition of Handel?s works and had completed 180 volumes by his death in 1802. Arnold is buried in Westminster Abbey, along with two of England?s other musical greats, Handel and Purcell.


Samuel Arnold wrote no less than 60 works for the stage, including The Maid of the Mill , the first English opera to have action finales in the manner of its European counterparts, The Castle of Andalusia , Turk and No Turk, and the oratorio The Prodigal Son (1773), the last work performed at Oxford on the occasion of Arnold?s receiving the degree of doctor of music from Oxford University; all of these further solidified Arnold?s reputation as a first-rate composer for the English theater.


Generally, composers active at the time would assemble works in sets of six or 12 for publication, as with the six concertos of Handel?s op. 3 and the dozen that make up his op. 6. Arnold?s half-dozen overtures fall into that pattern. There were exceptions to the rule, though, notable examples being Thomas Arne?s seven trio sonatas and William Boyce?s eight overtures and three concerti grossi .


The six overtures recorded on this Naxos release from the spring of 1996 were composed for the concerts at Marylebone Gardens and published in parts by John Welcker, c. 1771. They are high-spirited works and, as noted by Dr. Robert Hoskins in his excellent annotations, are composed in a ?homophonic idiom, with fast tempos, pleasing tunefulness, and colourful contrasts [that] had resonances with the gardens? audiences.? Although Arnold?s idiom is indebted to that of Johann Christian Bach and composers of the Mannheim school, there is a decidedly English ring to each work.


Apropos overtures, that to Polly , the long-delayed successor to Gay and Pepusch?s The Beggar?s Opera , didn?t grace the boards in London until 1777. It came on the heels of a revival of The Beggar?s Opera that included new music written by Thomas Linley. Arnold?s curtain raiser is nothing more than a medley of 13 tunes from the prequel to Polly . On the occasion of the premiere, a critic wrote in The Morning Post that ?the airs were arranged and blended with great judgement? and ?we do not remember any Overture being more enjoyed.?


The eight tracks that comprise Arnold?s music to Macbeth were composed for a 1778 production of Shakespeare?s masterpiece at Colman?s Little Theater, but the critics weren?t as kind as they were to Polly the previous year, complaining of botched lines, provincial dialects, and inappropriate costumes. While there is newly composed music in the score, Arnold also relied upon traditional Scottish tunes, including The Braes of Ballenden and Lochaber and a march from Henry Purcell?s incidental music to Bonduca.


Arnold?s op. 8 set is the strongest music on this Naxos release, being characterized by that typical English bent for a sprightly tune in the outer movements and uncomplicated lyrical material in the slower central sections. Beneath this seemingly simple exterior though, one finds enviable craft in the alternation and working out of thematic material, not to mention refined phrasing, and some interesting and colorful timbres.


Kevin Mallon and the Toronto Camerata?incorrectly identified on the cover as the Toronto Chamber Orchestra?have recorded several discs for Naxos, including symphonies of Ordonez and Vanhal, as well as CDs of violin concertos of Saint-Georges and flute concertos of C. P. E. Bach. The band?s playing is consistent from release to release: it is always alert, in tune, and successfully carries the message of the music in question, whether profound or not. This latest release in its discography is well presented with charm and elegance in bright and resonant sound, making for empathetic interpretations that unquestionably bestow long-belated credit to the bulk of the material, i.e., the op. 8 Overtures.


FANFARE: Michael Carter

Salve Festa Dies: Gregorian Chant for Seasons of the Year

Regino Sáinz de la Maza was a leading guitarist, composer and teacher who earned a place in history as the first soloist to perform Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. His compositions are deeply rooted in his Spanish identity, drawing heavily on Castillian and Andalusian folksong. Award-winning guitarist Franz Halász has selected the finest examples of Sáinz de la Maza’s creativity, including the admired Zapateado, atmospheric pieces from the film La Frontera de Dios (tracks 2, 8, 10 and 12), and the profoundly evocative Seguidilla-Sevillana.

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release



Composed during a period of social readjustment in post-war France, the First Cello Concerto marked Saint-Saens’ acceptance as a composer among the establishment, and has long been one of his most admired works. Recognition for the fiendishly technical Second Cello Concerto took longer, although its tranquil central movement contains one of the most sublime melodies Saint-Saens ever wrote. The supremely famous Le Cygne appears alongside the less well-known Bach-inspired Suite in D minor, and with the inclusion of the Romance this programme contains Saint-Saens’ complete works for cello and orchestra.

Much of the music here would have been more familiar 75 years ago than it is today; Jascha Heifetz, in particular, championed the Saint-Saëns violin sonatas. But now that self-serving ideas of straight-line musical progress have been put to rest, Saint-Saëns is benefiting from something of a comeback, with the Naxos label and others putting out intelligently programmed selections of his music. This one, by French violinist Fanny Clamagirand and pianist Vanya Cohen, is delightful. It features a performance of the Violin Sonata No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 102, overflowing with melody in the slow movement, as well as some even less familiar music. The opening Suite in D minor for violin and piano, Op. 16, is fascinating. Composed in 1862, it represents Saint-Saëns take on the Baroque suite, and one might even say the French neo-classicism began here. There is also a violin sonata Saint-Saëns wrote at the age of 13, a charming piece of juvenilia, and two short works in contrasting modes, a Romance in C major, Op. 48, on the melodic side and a Méditation in quasi-operatic mode. The only really famous tune here is the arrangement for violin and piano of Le Cygne (The Swan), from The Carnival of the Animals; it serves as a kind of encore. As she did on her earlier recording of Saint-Saëns' chamber music, Clamagirand cultivates a lyrical attitude and a gorgeous tone that are the essence of the French school. Naxos deserves kudos for the sound this time out; the music is recorded in a superb (and non-French) venue, the UK's Wyastone Concert Hall, and the performers are up close but not overbearing.

-- James Manheim, All Music Guide

SAINT-SAËNS Violin Sonata in d. Berceuse, Op. 38. Elégies: No. 1 in D, Op. 143; No. 2 in F, Op. 160. Sarabande et Rigaudon, Op. 93. Romance in D?, Op. 37. L’air de la pendule triptyque, Op. 136 • Fanny Clamagirand (vn); Vanya Cohen (pn) • NAXOS 8.572750 (68:01)


This CD turned out to be more than a pleasant surprise; it turned out to be a sheer delight. I wasn’t sure what to expect from two relatively young and relatively unknown (on record, at least) artists in Saint-Saëns’s frequently essayed Violin Sonata in D Minor, but the performance by Fanny Clamagirand and Vanya Cohen proved positively persuasive and more than competitive with some of the very best, among which I would count my first recording of the piece with Heifetz and Emanuel Bay on a 1950 RCA LP, along with more recent versions by Gil Shaham and Gerhard Oppitz on Deutsche Grammophon, and the very impressive young violinist Jack Liebeck with Katya Apekisheva on Quartz.


Clamagirand (b. 1984), a past graduate student of Jean-Jacques Kantorow at the Paris Conservatory, sports a robust tone that projects with a good deal of authority, yet is of an alluring sweetness. Saint-Saëns’s D-Minor Sonata, the first and by far more popular of two he wrote, can invite some coarseness in tone in a number of its rough-and-tumble passages, but Clamagirand will have none of it. She cuts through the slashing first-movement chords without slashing them, and she springs sprightly through the ricochet-like spiccato bowing in the Allegretto moderato . Vanya Cohen, born in 1980 in Monaco of Russian parents, leaves no doubt in her confident delivery of the piano part that Saint-Saëns’s swirling and whirling score is as much piano sonata as it is violin sonata. This is as brilliant and thoroughly convincing a performance of the piece as I know.


The most enchanting aspect of this album, however, is the short, salon-like pieces that fill out the disc to a generous 68 minutes. All in all, not counting the two sonatas, Saint-Saëns composed no more than six opus numbers originally scored for violin and piano, and on the present disc we have all but one of them, the Caprice brilliant in B Minor of 1859. In its place, Clamagirande and Cohen give us the Romance, op. 37, originally for flute and piano, but published with an alternate version for violin. And for extra measure, they also give us the Sarabande et Rigaudon , op. 93, originally a work for orchestra.


It would be inaccurate to say that these pieces are entirely absent from the catalog, but according to current listings, they’ve received scant attention on disc; and that’s really a shame, for there’s not one of them that’s not a real charmer. This is a most enjoyable program, and it’s one performed to the highest standards by two exceptionally talented artists. Very strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Dong-Suk Kang brings out the delicate lyricism in Saint-Saen's most popular violin concerto. The coupling of concertnate works brings similar charm, and it is good to have the rarer Caprice andalous included, a 10-minute piece with many typical Saint-Saens felicities...
PENGUIN GUIDE, 2003/4 Edition

Having been unimpressed with previous releases by Slatkin and the Lyon orchestra in music by Ravel and Berlioz, I am happy to report that the team finally rises to its potential in this enterprising disc of Saint-Saëns’ music for organ and orchestra. First, however, we need to discuss the organ, because this release is as much about that instrument as it concerns the orchestra. The Lyon auditorium houses the famous Paris Trocadero organ built by the illustrious Cavaillé-Coll in 1878. It was one of the first, and certainly the greatest, concert hall organ in its day. As presently restored, the instrument incorporates changes made in 1939 from a prior refurbishment, and so is not in its original condition, but it does still contain many of the imitative “orchestral” stops that made these “symphonic” organs so revolutionary for the period.

By the time noted organist Edwin Lemare made his transcription of the Danse macabre decades later, the concept of the symphonic organ had expanded to include complete divisions of (allegedly) string-toned pipes. Some of these were more successful than others at creating the proper illusion. Lemare’s own organ in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for example–recently restored–had both violin and cello vibrato, celeste and orchestral violin stops in its string division. None of these except the vibrato-producing celeste were present in the Trocadero instrument, and so organist Vincent Warnier has had to modify Lemare’s registration accordingly. This he has managed with great sensitivity, and his performance, while a touch on the slow side (inevitably, in order to keep the rhythms clean), is still remarkably convincing, and an excellent example of how a symphonic organ can be used to play highly entertaining transcriptions of basic repertoire.

Cyprès et Lauriers is a diptych consisting of an elegiac organ solo linked to an organ-and-orchestra finale. It’s not great Saint-Saëns, but its 13 minutes pass by enjoyably, and it gives the organist the opportunity to display his instrument’s power and coloristic subtleties equally well. It has to be said that the current restoration has created a very pleasant-sounding instrument, with few of those excessively reedy, nasal stops that we often hear in 19th century organs, especially in France. Some aficionados love that particular gravelly sonority, but I’m not one of them.

And so to the symphony. Slatkin has finally whipped the orchestra into shape and they deliver a very enjoyable performance. The first movement is basically unplayable if you take Saint-Saëns’ double-note rhythms seriously, and so most performances kind of mush them together, creating an atmosphere of generalized agitation. This works perfectly well, but Slatkin has his players really articulate the principal theme of the allegro, and while it robs the music of some of its potential excitement, the result is effective and expressively apt. The same rhythmic precision characterizes the scherzo, whose 6/8 theme begins on an upbeat, which often somehow degenerates in many performances (Ormandy’s on Sony, for example) to the point where the tune seems to enter on a downbeat. Not here.

As for the two movements with organ, the balances with the orchestra are very naturally caught by the Radio France engineers. The transfer to disc is a bit low level, so you really need to turn up the volume for the best effect, and there’s plenty of room around the instruments. You won’t be overwhelmed by the organ’s sonority–no 747 jet engine revving up for takeoff here–but that’s a good thing. You get music, not noise. The interplay between the orchestra and the organ is a constant source of delight, and the finale still builds to a truly rousing conclusion. Altogether this is a very pleasing and worthwhile release, and a belated vindication for Slatkin and the Lyon players.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The third volume in Marc Soustrot's series on Naxos of the five symphonies of Camille Saint-Saëns presents one of his least familiar works, the Symphony in F major, "Urbs Roma," an early effort from 1856, written when the composer was 21 years old. The symphony won a prize at a competition held by the Bordeaux Société Ste Cécile, no doubt in recognition of Saint-Saëns' skillful orchestration and many striking passages that, by turns, evoke Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. However, Saint-Saëns thought so little of the piece that he didn't publish it, and it subsequently suffered from decades of neglect. With little coverage in the concert hall or on CD, this symphony deserves a break-out recording, and Soustrot's performance with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra may be the one to secure this symphony a place in the standard repertoire. Programmed with the somewhat obscure tone poem, La jeunesse d'Hercule, and the extremely popular Danse macabre, the symphony has a fine presentation, and if Soustrot has performed a service for Saint-Saëns' music, it may be in giving new life to this long forgotten work.

– Blair Sanderson, All Music Guide

All of Saint-Saëns’ symphonies have been thrown into the shadows by the popularity of the last of them, the famous “Organ” Symphony (No. 3). This is a pity, because the others are very enjoyable and rewarding pieces. The First, dating from 1852 when the composer was only seventeen, features a finale whose scoring includes saxhorns, cymbals, and four harps, and it reveals a composer who, despite his classical leanings, wasn’t afraid to challenge convention. The more modestly scored Second Symphony of seven years later continues that trend, sporting a contrapuntal opening movement that’s remarkably assured and formally successful.

The standard reference versions for these works have been Martinon’s EMI (now Warner) recordings, but Soustrot’s are different enough to justify duplication. In the First Symphony, particularly, Soustrot adopts a very slow, dreamy tempo for the Adagio, but it works very well, particularly in contrast to the bold and brassy finale which follows without a break. Soustrot correctly highlights the adventurous writing for the harps, but never tastelessly, and some listeners may feel that the interpretation finds additional expressive depth in music often denigrated as merely sentimental. It’s good to hear it played with no apologies.

In the Second Symphony Soustrot comes closer to Martinon in terms of timing, but there’s no denying the extra clarity and nimbleness of the Malmö ensemble as compared to the old French National Radio and Television Orchestra for EMI. Soustrot’s exciting and rhythmically sharp reading of Phaéton makes a welcome bonus. This is unquestionably one of the best recordings of the piece, with an especially effective thunderbolt as Zeus hurls the hapless chariot (of the sun) driver from his seat. Attractively natural sonics round out a very promising start to this new series.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

While the invention of the symphonic poem is credited to Franz Liszt, French composer Camille Saint-Saens truly took the genre to a new level. The symphonic poem became popular in France in the early 1870s, supported by the newly founded Societe Nationale and its promotion of young French composers. Camille Saint-Saens composed his Le rouet d’Omphale in 1872, with three more soon following. The most famous was his Danse macabre. In all of these works he experiments with orchestration and thematic transformation. In this new release, the Orchestre National de Lille does a service to their fellow countryman, with Jun Markl as their faithful leader at the helm.

The Third Piano Concerto has been considered the "Cinderella" among Camille Saint-Saëns' five works in this genre, but it owes its comparative neglect to an adventurous approach to harmony which caused unrest in the audience at its premiere. Daring enough in the first movement, the search for tonality in the second was such an extreme experience that is caused unrest in the audience at its premiere. Saint-Saëns also composed for piano and orchestra in more rhapsodic forms, exploring folk tunes and rhythms from Africa, and revealing his playful side in the charming Wedding Cake Waltz. Volume 1 can be heard on 8573476.

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Soustrot’s Saint-Saëns symphony cycle was quite good, and this new project looks to be similarly successful. For my money, the five piano concertos remain one of the most underrated groups of major works in the entire romantic repertoire. Yes, Nos. 2 and 4 get played more often than the rest, but there isn’t a dud in the bunch. It’s really only prejudice against the French aesthetic–the formal freedom, love of color, flash, and the dance–that prevents the music from getting the recognition that it deserves. That, and perhaps the fact that the melodious ease that informs all of Saint-Saëns’ writing makes a mockery of German pretensions to ownership of instrumental music in large forms.

These performances demonstrate a thoroughly “French” sensibility. Romain Descharmes savors the music’s charm and brilliance without indulging in excessive sentimentality. The First Concerto, with its surprising wiring for horns, has a breezy freshness that completely disarming. It’s played with joyful directness and a complete lack of affectation. I enjoy fast and dazzling versions of the Second Symphony, with its whirlwind finale, but Descharmes treats the piece with almost epicurean relish, nowhere more so than in this sassy, witty account of the central scherzo. There’s no lack of virtuosity, but also time to savor the music’s many harmonic delights.

Through it all, Soustrot accompanies with total confidence, and the sonics are terrific. A disc to savor.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

SAINT-SAENS: Symphony No. 3 / Le Rouet d'Omphale