Customer Reviews

Saint-Saens: Carnival of the Animals; Septet

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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I've owned this CD for a couple of years. It's terrific, full of musical wit and also endowed with Saint-Saens' phenomenal gift for melody. The chamber music scoring really brings you much closer to the music of The Carnival of the Animals than you get with the traditional orchestral version.

My favorites on this disc, however, are the Fantasy for Violin and Harp and the Septet, op. 65. The Fantasy, 12 minutes long, feels like a completely spontaneous outpouring of varied musical ideas, taking you on a whirlwind tour of the emotions from nostalgia through whimsy to romantic intrigue. Seriously. May seem like Romantic-Era fluff to some ears, but it always floats my boat. Likewise the Septet is both a showcase for the composer's craft and a delightful romp for the instrumentalists involved.

The recording is top-notch too. Clean and bright, very French. But I wonder if anyone else out there is disturbed by the extraneous noise in track 17, the Prayer for Cello and Piano? Sounds like audience? Page turns? Traffic outside the hall? Engineer chatter? Slightly distracting, especially in the first minute or so.

This recording of an old favorite is quite quirky...and that's what makes these fun pieces REALLY fun! The small ensemble brings intimacy to the work. My favorite was "Pianists" - hilarious.

the carnival of the animals is a delightful trifle by a clever composer. It's funny, it's pleasant music and one does not have to agonize about the state of the world every time he or she listens to music. The performance by Capucon et al. is a very good one, perhaops not the best, but a very good one.It has an additional advantage, a CD jacket that is absolutely charming.

The Saint-Saens Septet is one of his best works, and certainly his best piece of chamber music. It is amazing that it is so infrequently performed. Of really fine performances I only know of the great one with Jean Marie Darre, a persuasive one with Daniel Guilet, and this much later one with the Capucon cuties. It is a very rollicking performance of the Septet, only missing the sly, diffident and campy quality of the Darre recording. But it sort of makes up for that with youthful enthusiasm. And if there was ever a proof that great cover art did not utterly -- but perhaps mostly -- die with the demise of the lp it is this CD, which folds out to display a whole menagerie of dressed animals to celebrate the famous work given yet another go around on the disc. What a delightful grouping of characters the artist conjures in honor of Saint-Saens' zoo.