Fanny Clamagirand and Vanya Cohen, under the empire of Saint-Saëns

On the occasion of the centenary of the death of Camille Saint-Saëns, violinist Fanny Clamagirand and pianist Vanya Cohen are releasing an album tribute to the composer.

© Jean-Baptiste Millot

By: Jean-François Cadet Follow

1 min

Prodigy composer, orientalist, traveler, grumpy and elusive, Camille Saint-Saëns will have marked his time with his music.

The author of Carnival of the Animals died 100 years ago today.

Violinist Fanny Clamagirand and pianist Vanya Cohen pay homage to him.

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American musicologist Mitchell Morris considers Camille Saint-Saëns to be a “traveling monument of French music”.

It is true that the composer of the Carnival of the Animals had something impressive about his beard which sometimes made him look severe.

He was also a great traveler, whose fragile bronchi appreciated the milder climates of Egypt or Algeria.

He thus nourished his work with fashionable Orientalism in the second half of the 19th century in Europe.

The child prodigy born in Paris in 1835 was deeply marked - like many at the time - by the French defeat of 1870-1971 against Germany. He turned his back on his former admiration for Wagner to become the ambassador of French Romanticism. He is also one of the founders of the National Music Society.

100 years ago to the day, on December 16, 1821, Camille Saint-Saëns died in Algiers.

Violinist

and pianist

know him inside and out.

They recorded their versions of some of Saint-Saëns' most popular works: the danse macabre;

the Havanese;

the Introduction and rondo capriccioso.

But also and for the first time on a disc, the version for piano and violin of Dalila's aria from the opera “Samson and Delilah”.

The disc is available from Naxos.

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