The Nash Ensemble - Camille Saint-Saens: Chamber Works (2005)

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The Nash Ensemble - Camille Saint-Saens: Chamber Works (2005)

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This generous double disc survey of Saint-Saens' chamber music offers the listener over two hours of unalloyed pleasure and contains a judicious selection of works for various ensembles that range across his career - indeed the three sonatas for bassoon, clarinet and oboe respectively are very late pieces and were part of an intended series of such works for each member of the standard woodwind family, a project only curtailed by the composer's death in 1921. There are pieces of some substance here, such as the piano quintet and the piano quartet, both of which come in at around the 30 minute mark, but also occasional works and jeux d'esprit, like the Tarantelle in A minor or the Caprice on Danish and Russian themes.
The septet that opens the programme - scored for piano and a string quintet plus, unusually, a trumpet - combines elements of both these approaches to composition; written after some demur for the music society (named La Trompette) of a friend, this is a real delight - whimsical and witty, its mock-serious use of forms such as fugue showcase his ability to write music of technical proficiency that never loses its charm. Replete with melody (as is everything in this collection), it also packs a startling variety of incident into its relatively short span and there are some delectable examples of the composer's gift for imaginative scoring, some of which - like the brief appearance of scurrying violin figures in the fugal section of the opening 'Preambule' - are tantalisingly over just as you begin to savour them; although perfectly formed, this is definitely music that left me wanting to hear more. In its concision and utilisation of traditional musical procedures, the septet presages in many ways the neo-classicism of the late sonatas presented here, which display much the same wit and economy in their musical language: they also evince not just Saint-Saens' knowledge of the abilities of each instrument, a skill that by the time of their composition had been honed over many years, but also the instruments' characters - the bassoon writing bubbles along merrily for much of the sonata's course, with inventive use of its lower registers, and the more plaintive passages of the oboe sonata or song-like writing in the clarinet sonata reveal that although the creative pendulum may have swung at this stage in his career more pronouncedly towards neo-Classicism than in his earlier works, that poise and detachment still remains remains tempered by a Romantic sensibility.
The two larger scale works here, the piano quintet of 1855 and the piano quartet of 1875, are evidence of how finely and skilfully balanced that dichotomy between Classical and Romantic traits was throughout his oeuvre. Perhaps, though, Saint-Saens should be viewed as the most gifted exemplar of that characteristic rather than as an isolated one, especially when one considers that opera and ballet dominated the French music establishment and homegrown instrumental music was mainly the province of composers who are now viewed as relatively minor figures, such as Onslow, Gouvy and Farrenc all of whom, though evidently talented, were generally conservative (even, backward-looking) in their symphonies and chamber works. Both works, even the early quintet, demonstrate his excellent and imaginative command not just of traditional musical structures - of which the use of chorale and fugal textures in the striking 'Andante maestoso ma con moto' of the piano quartet is just one example, the ingenious contrapuntal writing of the piano quintet's finale another - but also his inventive scoring, as in the sonorous coda of the quintet's opening 'Allegro moderato e maestoso' for instance. I wouldn't necessarily say that these are emotionally profound works in general but there are movements and passages of drama and sometimes hauntingly lovely lyricism - the 'Andante' of the piano quintet is particularly memorable and beautiful, the delicate interplay of strings and piano creating a movement of very distinctive atmosphere quite unlike anything else here (even, perhaps, anything elsewhere too). The scherzos and finales have real spirit to them and that sense of vivacity and élan is marvellously realised by the performers.
Indeed, all the performances here are wonderful. I don't think Saint-Saens could have wished for better advocacy of these works than he gets from the musicians of The Nash Ensemble. The sound quality is equally admirable: bright and clear but with warmth to it as well, and the varying instrumental ensembles come across as ideally balanced. None of these works, the piano quartet excepted maybe, are staples of either the performing or recording repertoire which makes this two-disc set a particularly welcome one for admirers of the composer; even for the general listener, curious about exploring the composer's catalogue beyond the Organ Symphony and his 'Carnival of the Animals', I think there would be much to enjoy in this set - certainly, I find the music makes for highly enjoyable and rewarding listening and it is a collection I have returned to time and again with undiminished pleasure.

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The Nash Ensemble - Camille Saint-Saens: Chamber Works (2005)

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