Gounod / Netherlands Chamber Orchestra / Nikolic - Symphonies - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Camille Saint-Saens was only fifteen years old when he composed his first symphony in 1850, which is known as his Symphony No. 0 - his official Symphony No. 1 would not arrive for another three years. Gounod was thirty-seven years old when his La nonne sanglante was removed from the repertoire of the Paris Opera by a new director; he swiftly restored his spirits by composing a symphony for the Societe des Jeunes Artistes in March 1855. Bizet, aged seventeen, began work on his Symphony in C major that same year. Gounod's symphony clearly influenced Bizet's work, as Bizet had just completed a transcription of it for piano four hands. This recording marks the beginning of a collaboration between the Alpha Classics tag, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and it's music director Kazuki Yamada, a great lover of the French symphonic repertoire and also music director of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and the Seiji Ozawa International Academy.

After winning the Prix de Rome for his cantata Fernand in 1839 and spending two years in Rome, Gounod should have gone on to study in Germany, but he managed in 1842 to persuade the authorities that he should remain in Rome to work on a symphony. In 1843 he visited Mendelssohn who (while trying to dissuade him from wasting his time on Goethe's Faust!) urged him to write another symphony. We do not know how much of the First Symphony Gounod had completed by then, but it is not surprising that Mendelssohn figures as one of the key influences on both symphonies. After performances of individual movements in 1855, premieres were given of the First on 4 March that year and of the Second on 13 February 1856. Yan Pascal Tortelier and his Iceland Symphony Orchestra demonstrate outstanding precision and musicality in these unjustly neglected works.

Timothy McAllister - Glint [COMPACT DISCS] date 06/29/2010