The music of Camille Saint-Saëns seems to have undergone something of a revival, with several cycles and series of unknown works underway as of the late 2010s and early 2020s. The one by conductor Jun Märkl, which so far has involved several different orchestras, shows great promise on this release with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, well recorded in its hometown concert hall. The bulk of the program is given over to a ballet sequence from the opera Ascanio (1890), which is rarely heard. The opera tells the story of sculptor ...
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The music of Camille Saint-Saëns seems to have undergone something of a revival, with several cycles and series of unknown works underway as of the late 2010s and early 2020s. The one by conductor Jun Märkl, which so far has involved several different orchestras, shows great promise on this release with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, well recorded in its hometown concert hall. The bulk of the program is given over to a ballet sequence from the opera Ascanio (1890), which is rarely heard. The opera tells the story of sculptor Benvenuto Cellini and takes place partly at Fontainebleau Palace, where a dance segment unfolds in an outdoor courtyard. For these scenes, Saint-Saëns devised a series of sparkling little moments of dance in which he tried to replicate the sound of Rameau's music, appropriate to the period. The results do show the distance between hearing something exotic and being able to replicate it, even for Saint-Saëns, who would soon make an early edition of Rameau's works, but this doesn't...
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Add this copy of Saint-Saens: Ascanio: Ballet-Overtures to cart. $32.47, new condition, Sold by newtownvideo rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from huntingdon valley, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2019 by Naxos.
