The Best of Saint-Saëns

Description

These recordings are available for sync licensing in web video productions, corporate videos, films, ads and music compilations. For further information and licensing please contact info@halidononline.com. ☕ If you like what we do and would like to support us, you can now buy us a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/halidonmusic. Donations will go towards keeping the YouTube channel going and funding new recording sessions with our amazing team of artists. Thank you! 🙏 Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was a French composer, pianist, and organist—one of the most prolific and technically accomplished musicians of the Romantic era, celebrated for bridging the classical tradition with a distinctly French sensibility. Born in Paris, he showed exceptional musical gifts from infancy, performing publicly as a pianist at age ten. He became organist at the Madeleine in 1857 and was a founding figure of the Société Nationale de Musique (1871), a key institution in the revival of French instrumental music. A close friend of Liszt and an admirer of Bach and Handel, he was at once a guardian of tradition and a bold formal experimenter. His output spans virtually every genre: the opera Samson et Dalila (1877) stands as his dramatic masterpiece, while the Organ Symphony (No. 3, 1886) remains his most celebrated orchestral achievement. His piano and violin concertos are cornerstones of the Romantic repertoire, and the witty Carnival of the Animals (1886)—kept private during his lifetime—became one of the most beloved orchestral suites ever written. A tireless traveler, he spent extended periods in Algeria, Egypt, and the Canary Islands, and his music occasionally reflects these encounters with non-European soundscapes. He remained active as a performer and composer until the very end, dying in Algiers in December 1921. Tracklist: 00:00:00 Danse macabre (Arr. for String Quintet by Fabien Touchard) Smoking Joséphine Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33: 00:07:39 I. Allegro non troppo 00:13:02 II. Allegretto con moto 00:18: