Saint Saëns: Organ Works- Freyburger

Matthieu Freyburger, organ

Camille Saint Saëns
Organ works

Orchestral works by Saint-Saëns and his contemporaries, and particularly those that met with success, underwent a multitude of transformations that ran the gamut from practical opera reductions for piano and voice (whose object was to help the soloists and choir learn the score) to Liszt's flamboyant piano reduction of Saint Saëns's Danse macabre. Writing transcriptions required lucidity and a precise aesthetic goal.
Liszt apologised for his transcription of the Danse macabre, pointing out his "inability to reduce for the piano the marvellous colour of the score.
No one has yet succeeded in making the piano sound like an orchestra. Nevertheless, one must always reach towards the ideal through every possible form. However difficult and insufficient it may be."
Alexandre Guilmant, an illustrious performer and disseminator of music written by his French contemporaries, held an attitude similar to Liszt's.
The organist and musicologist Karl Lueders cites him as saying in 1898, "I am completely opposed to playing orchestral works on the organ unless their style naturally links them to that of that instrument as do the choruses of Handel and Bach. Listening to symphonic works played on the organ and expecting to hear orchestral effects leads to quite deplorable results in my opinion".

Price: $23.98