Saint-Saëns: Septet in E flat major for piano, trumpet, 2 violins, viola, cello and double bass Op. 65

“'What hard things,' wrote Saint-Saëns, 'have been said against virtuosity!… The fact must be proclaimed from the house-tops – in art a difficulty overcome is a thing of beauty.' There are many such beauties in Le Carnaval des animaux, and their difficulties aren't for the faint-hearted or the technically challenged, especially where the two pianists are concerned. On this disc not only are the difficulties overcome, but dispatched with tremendous verve and wit.
In the Septet the players rightly refuse to make more of the music than is really there. This light touch allows us to relish Saint-Saëns's professionalism: every part in the texture has its own shape and colour and, if there were compositional difficulties to be overcome, you'd never know. The four shorter pieces on this splendid disc include the delicious Fantaisie for violin and harp, and three arrangements for cello and piano taken from the horn, organ and operatic repertoires.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Saint-Seëns in full vigour and mastery - a wonderful pair of discs” BBC Music Magazine, 1st July 2008

“Saint-Saëns's chamber music fares better in the concert hall than the recording studio, perhaps because musicians tend to listen less to academic name-calling ('conservative', 'too prolific') than to the music itself. The three late wind sonatas in particular have received far fewer recordings than their status as repertoire staples deserves.
Try the kinky-Baroque first movement of the Oboe Sonata, jauntily phrased by Gareth Hulse, or the animato second of the Clarinet Sonata, garbed in rich Mozartian cloth by Richard Hosford.
The Bassoon Sonata is notable for its fresh and gentle wit and skirting of cliché: Ursula Leveaux does it proud, with especially luscious tone in the opening Allegretto.
Surprises are fewer in the earlier works, but none is less than,'finely put together' to echo Ravel's assessment. Hummability quotient is high in the Piano Quartet and Quintet, and off the scale in the Septet. The late Lionel Salter used to complain in Gramophone that recordings of the Septet tend to sound like a trumpet concerto; not this one. If you employ hit artists like Maurice André they will tend to hog the microphone but, happily, Mark David is a more sensitive soul who's fully imbibed the Nash's joyous spirit of corporate music-making, and Hyperion's engineers have placed him at a respectable distance. If anything it's Ian Brown's piano that takes centre-stage, and that's no bad thing, except in the extensive fugal finales to the Piano Quartet and Quintet where Saint-Saëns, most unusually, seems to over-run himself. The Caprice and Tarantelle, for all Philippa Davies's sparkling contributions, perhaps bear fewer repetitions, but the set is really sheer delight: let's hear it for imaginative conservatism.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010