![]() Now, where am I going with this? Well, bear with me, I’m using the opportunity to actually fill in a bit of back-story to the subject of this entry. According to Steven Studd’s biography, his period of employment at the Ecole Niedermeyer was relatively short (just 4 years), but among his pupils, the most famous of which was Gabriel Faure, his influence was strong and said that his teacher was “an incomparable virtuoso and composer of bold genius, he opened up horizons that were previously closed to us.” Faure, even as a later highly successful composer himself, still continued to send his old teacher new compositions for comments and input. Interestingly, his principal appointment was as a piano teacher, not a composition teacher, though as it subsequently transpired that he did effectively serve in the other capacity as well. In 1861 in addition to his job at the Church of the Madeleine, Saint-Saens accepted a teaching role at the Ecole Niedermeyer, a small academy established by the composer Louis Niedermeyer (who had recently died). In grand opera tradition, Saint-Saens therefore resorted to …. These are I’m sure feelings that most of us would be familiar in our professional and personal lives at one stage or another. It was, to put it crudely, where the money was, and it irked Saint-Saens that ‘lesser’ composers like Offenbach and Gounod were reaping success where he was failing (remember also that he had failed at the Prix De Rome also). The principal successful composers – Gounod and Offenbach, Massenet and Bizet (though their success was somewhat later in coming), Meyerbeer (not originally French, but heavily based in France), even Berlioz were focussed on Opera. This was a time, where in France, any composer who was anybody was focussed on opera. ![]() ![]() In part this sudden drought was brought on due to problems with his eyesight, but in part also brought about, it would seem through a frustration with his failure to secure an opera commission. 1861, 1862 – well, the muse had not so much as left Saint-Saens, as walked out slamming the door behind it. There were several songs and small church choral pieces in 1860, which I’ve now covered. According to Steven Studd’s biography of the composer, the years 1860-1862, in sharp contrast to the highly productive 5 years preceding (which resulted in 3 symphonies, 3 concerti and major works like the Mass and the Christmas Oratorio), almost no major new works were produced. On its own terms, this disc is highly recommended.In the early 1860s, as a composer, Saint-Saens was, if not struggling, probably encountering his only major period of low productivity. And the Mahler Suite is an infectious confection. Anne" Prelude and Fugue is boisterous good fun. The Elgar C minor Fantasy and Fugue is a moving example of Elgarian Nobilmente at its best. Amazingly enough, the rest of the disc isn't anticlimatic. One imagines that Stokowski would have loved it. He even goes so far as to slow down at the stretto just before the climax of the fugue. Salonen gives the devil his due and grants Stokowski all the ponderous weight the LAPO can summon. Apparently, to Stokowski, Bach was a chubby German burgher with a penchant for flashy clothes and cheap jewelry: his transcription of the Toccata is overdressed, fat, and slow. After some fairly snoozy years under the aging André Previn, the Los Angeles Philharmonic under music director Esa-Pekka Salonen has become one of the great virtuoso orchestras in the country, fully capable of playing Mahler, Stravinsky, Messiaen or even Bach transcriptions with fire and precision.Īs you might expect, the disc starts with the most (in)famous Bach transcription of all time: the Stokowski Toccata and Fugue in D minor. But that hardly matters since this disc is clearly not for purists it's for music lovers who want to rock with Bach. To the purist, a transcription is an abomination in the ears of God and man, and any transcription is a mortal sin against the art of Bach. But no justification is possible or even necessary. "Cranked-up," "Rock 'n' Roll," "thick shag of strings": these are just a few of the unlikely descriptions used by the writer of the liner notes for his release in a useless attempt to justify the ways of transcription to man.
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