Romain Descharmes, Malmo Symphony Orchestra & Marc Soustrot – Saint-Saens: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 (2018) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

Romain Descharmes, Malmö Symphony Orchestra & Marc Soustrot – Saint-Saëns: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:15 minutes | 933 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Naxos

Saint-Saëns’s mature creative genius shines throughout these last two piano concertos, looking back over a glorious musical ancestry while at the same time opening the door to new worlds. The Fourth Piano Concerto is prescient of both his great Organ Symphony and the concertos of Rachmaninov, revealing Saint-Saëns at his most inspired and innovative. The Fifth was composed in the Egyptian temple town of Luxor, and displays a rich tapestry of exotic cultural influences from Javanese, Spanish and Middle Eastern music, as well as portrayals of chirping Nile crickets and croaking frogs, and the composer’s representation of ‘the joy of a sea crossing’.

With this latest consignment of concertos by Saint-Saëns, the Malmö Orchestra directed by Marc Soustrot and with the pianist Romain Descharmes round off an adventure that began in 2013. The 1875 Fourth Concerto, charming enough on its own account, also appears to prefigure the Organ Symphony which was written ten years later, both in terms of the musical discourse but also the orchestral grip: it’s recognisable from a mile off. Twenty years separate the Fourth from the Fifth, written in 1896 to celebrate fifty years since the composer made his 1846 Parisian début. The work’s nickname – taken from its origin in the town of Luxor which Saint-Saëns visited during one of his frequent stays in Egypt, where he would take refuge from wintry Paris and enjoy the local attractions – is slightly misleading, as the concerto doesn’t really have any particularly Middle Eastern or North African accents, but instead it is more marked by Spanish influences (well, Arabo-Andalusian, strictly speaking). Rather than being “Egyptian”, the work is more of a rich tapestry of diverse cultural influences against a Pyramid-themed backcloth. The second movement offers a few zoological notes, closing to the sounds of croaking toads and chirping Nile crickets.

Tracklist:

Piano Concerto No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 44, R. 197
1 I. Allegro moderato
2 II. Allegro vivace

Piano Concerto No. 5 in F Major, Op. 103, R. 205 “Egyptian”
3 I. Allegro animato
4 II. Andante
5 III. Molto allegro

Download:

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