Eugène Ysaÿe, a violin virtuoso admired by all his contemporaries, was an inheritor of what has justly been considered as the Belgian school of violin, whose ascendancy can be traced back to the beginning of the 19th century. His work as a composer, however, is much less well known today and it is this facet of his extraordinarily active life that we will explore here. He composed many different types of works; here we present his works for solo violin and orchestra, including two movements of violin concertos which are now available on record for the first time, and his chamber music.

François-Xavier Roth, not this time with his ‘period’ ensemble Les Siècles but with the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, conducts a performance of César Franck’s Le chasseur maudit that has dramatic thrust, demonic intensity and clearly defined textural detail as well. There is a very real sense, in listening to this performance, that Roth and his orchestra have the dark narrative in their very blood, so that its frenzy, its tensions and the cursed hunter’s wild chase towards death come vividly before the mind’s eye.

The present album is the second of two recorded by the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and Jean-Jacques Kantorow to commemorate the centenary of the death of Camille Saint-Saëns. On the first instalment the team offered us ‘deeply impressive performances in stunning sound’ (theclassicreview.com) of the composer’s first and second symphonies and the unnumbered Symphony in A major, but now the time has come for Saint-Saëns’ crowning glory in the symphonic genre: his Symphony No. 3 in C minor, generally known as the ‘Organ Symphony’. The work was composed in 1886, and Saint-Saëns had planned to dedicate it to Liszt but the latter’s death the same year caused the dedication in the published score to be modified to ‘in memory of Franz Liszt’.

This ambitious project consists of a recording of the complete music for violin and orchestra and cello and orchestra by Saint-Saëns. It marks the beginning of an intensive collaboration between Zig-Zag Territories and the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.