Saint-Saëns: Suite algérienne, Op. 60 (with Score)

Camille Saint-Saëns:
Suite algérienne, for orchestra in C major, Op. 60 (with Score)
Composed: 1880
Conductor: David Robertson
Orchestra: Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo

00:00 1. Prélude (en vue d'Alger). Molto allegro
03:51 2. Rhapsodie mauresque. Allegretto non troppo (D major)
09:37 3. Rêverie du soir (à Blidah). Allegretto quasi Andantino (A major)
15:27 4. Marche militaire française. Allegro giocoso

In later life, Saint-Saëns became an inveterate world traveler -- Spain and Portugal, Italy and Greece, North and South America, England, Scandinavia, Russia, even the Canary Islands were all host to him. But Egypt and Algeria were his preferred holiday venues. Indeed, he met his death in Algiers on December 16, 1921, at the age of 86. Given such a prolific composer, and one who rose often to occasion, it is hardly surprising to find a number of musical travel souvenirs among his works -- Sur les bords du Nil and Hail California marches for military band, the choral Nuit persane; the Piano Concerto No. 5, "Egyptian"; the miniature piano concerto Africa; a Caprice sur des airs danois et russes for piano, flute, oboe, and clarinet; Souvenir d'Ismaïlia for piano; and so on. Among these, the "Egyptian" Concerto and Suite algérienne are still heard in concert and recorded with some regularity. The latter, composed in 1880, has retained its modicum of popularity owing to the visceral appeal of its final number, the dashing Marche militaire française, with its debonair pomp strutted in fleet aplomb. Saint-Saëns' recording of it at the piano, made in 1919, is not only exhilarating but affords, as well, a taste of the sec, crackling style sévère keyboard manner harking back to Mendelssohn and Alkan (who esteemed Saint-Saëns sufficiently to share the platform with him near the end of his life). Saint-Saëns also recorded the Suite's third movement, "Réverie du soir," whose suave ingratiation would not be out of place in Lalo's exotic ballet Namouna composed two years later. The second movement, a Rhapsodie mauresque, opens in similar balletic fashion, though a fugal development forecasts the more deftly powerful fugato passages of the Symphony No. 3 in C minor, "Organ," which would follow in 1886. This gives way to a straightforward exposition of Arab melodies whose raucously guttural provenance is suggested by sotto voce but rhythmically alive drums building to a brilliant climax. And setting the stage for this lovingly pictorial travelogue, a Prélude in radiant C major conveys the wave-borne wanderer's first glimpse of the dazzling North African sun shimmering upon the white walls and buildings of Algiers. The Suite algérienne was heard for the first time in December 1881, under the auspices of the Société Nationale de Musique, in a two-piano transcription by Fauré, performed by Fauré and Saint-Saëns. Fauré's pupil, Charles Koechlin, essayed similar scenes in his orchestral suite, Les Heures persanes, though in a quite different aural perspective.