Camille Saint-Saens (1835 – 1921)

Violin Concerto, no. 3, op.61 in B minor
conducted by Liza Grossman
Born in 1835 in Paris, Camille Saint-Saens is the most renowned French composer of the 19th century. His violin compositions are standards of the virtuoso repertoire. His most famous works for the instrument—Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and the Third Concerto in B minor—were each [...]

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Elgar

Elgar is Misunderstood

Message 1 – posted by R. A. D. Stainforth,
I once met a composer (English, I might add), who told me he liked to think of all music as being either French or German. This seemed odd, but once I tried it out, I found I knew fairly immediately what he meant. It was [...]

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Article in the Independent on Elgar

Elgar: Have we been hearing what he really wrote?
By Jessica Duchen
Published: 21 March 2006
It is Elgar as we have never heard him before: a newly revealed version of the composer’s epic Violin Concerto. The French violinist Philippe Graffin has made it his mission to resuscitate Elgar’s original vision of the work, according to manuscripts that [...]

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Bach

Contrapuntal climax
To look at the fair copy which JS Bach prepared in 1720 of his Sei Soli a Violino senza a Basso accompagnato is a moving experience. Bach’s fluent, dramatic, perfectly poised musical calligraphy is exquisitely laid out on the page; as was his custom, every page of manuscript is used to the utmost, with [...]

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