Charles Camille Saint-Saëns

Recorded in 1991

A superbly put together ‘2 for the price of I’ set, demonstrating the supreme talents of one of Poland’s leading orchestras. A release that spans the orchestral musical rainbow, from Bizet to Tansman. Simply enjoy.

It is interesting that of the nine composers featured in this recital four had no Spanish roots. The “exotic” nature of Spanish music - especially that of Andalusia in the south with its Moorish history and Gypsy culture - has irresistibly drawn non-Spanish composers.

It is an intriguing fact that the musical phrase that has surely been heard most often in history is taken from Tárrega’s charming Gran Vals, dating from around 1902. It was chosen by Nokia in 1993 to be the ring tone on its mobile telephones, and as such it has been heard billions of times. The phrase occurs 14 seconds into this recording, which is of a lightly elaborated four-hand arrangement made specially to provide the present recital with a whimsical encore – and again is the first recording in this form.

This disc, like the majority of recordings from Goldstone & Clemmow features numerous pieces which are new to the repertoire.

With CDs around forty in number and a busy concert schedule stretching back more than a quarter of a century, the British piano duo Goldstone and Clemmow is firmly established as a leading force. Described by Gramophone as ‘a dazzling husband and wife team’, by International Record Review as ‘a British institution in the best sense of the word’, and by The Herald, Glasgow, as ‘the UK’s pre-eminent two-piano team’, internationally known artists Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow formed their duo in 1984 and married in 1989. Their extremely diverse activities in two-piano and piano-duet recitals and double concertos, taking in major festivals, have sent them all over the British Isles as well as to Europe, the Middle East and several times to the U.S.A., where they have received standing ovations and such press accolades as ‘revelations such as this are rare in the concert hall these days’ (Charleston Post and Courier). In their refreshingly presented concerts they mix famous masterpieces and fascinating rarities, which they frequently unearth themselves, into absorbing and hugely entertaining programmes; their numerous BBC broadcasts have often included first hearings of unjustly neglected works, and their equally enterprising and acclaimed commercial recordings include many world premières.

For the last eleven years of his life Michael Rabin was without an active recording contract. We know from an interview that he gave six months before his accidental death that this hurt him. Rabin longed to record the Beethoven and Brahms Concertos and saw more opportunities to explore the nineteenth-century violinist-composer repertoire, but this was not to be.

Would the ending have been different had Rabin stayed with EMI as Walter Legge wanted? Did his decision to opt for Capitol over EMI, for reasons that were perhaps no more complex than wanting to travel less, hurt his long-term recording prospects by severing a direct connection with someone who had the ability to hear what hard-nosed marketing men could not? Towards the end of 1964 Rabin accepted a reduced royalty from EMI on the re-issue of his recordings, but within a few years even these meagre offerings were gone. “All but two or three of my records have been deleted” he ruefully informed the Philadelphia Inquirer, “I tried to get [Capitol] to re-issue them or send me the rights to them, but nothing has happened. I guess I can’t blame the recording companies for not helping me. The Classical business is in trouble, I hear...” This admission of defeat was not, however, the end of attempts at resurrecting his recorded legacy. After her son’s death Jeanne Rabin took up the cause, writing to EMI and Capitol and expressing a wish to reissue the recordings at her own expense. There was mention of Capitol charging her one dollar a pressing with the money generated by sales going to establish a Memorial Trust Fund in her son’s name. This too never came to pass. But the truism that great art tends to outlive the artist is borne out by Rabin’s posthumous fate. Fifty years after he last set foot in a recording studio as a Capitol artist, we have this new edition of his EMI recordings, and in 2012 Testament will release a further 3-CD set of Rabin performances taken from private tapes belonging to Bertine Rabin (Testament SBT31470). The frisson remains. Neither the passage of time nor Rabin’s thwarted hopes have diminished his allure.

Extract from the booklet note by Anthony Feinstein

Many composers, including Shostakovich and Rachmaninov, considered Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No.1 to be the greatest of all cello concertos. The second one is not as popular, but as the composer admitted, is very difficult to play. The Suite and the Allegro Passionata were originally composed for Cello and Piano but were later orchestrated by Saint Saëns.