This collection gathers Saint-Saëns’ complete solo piano output, piano duets, and two-piano works under one roof, with the Carnival of the Animals thrown in for good measure. Granted, it’s not the deepest keyboard literature, and more often than not the music’s substance is found in its surface elegance, classical proportions, and scintillating passagework. Like Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Chopin, and unlike Liszt, Schumann, or Brahms, Saint-Saëns’ idiomatic, highly exposed piano writing depends on supremely accurate execution to make its effects felt. His unforgiving textures resist faking. And what an honest pianist we have in Marylene Dosse! Her brilliant, highly articulated finger technique is characteristic of the late-19th/early-20th-century French school of pianism, and it perfectly suits Saint-Saëns’ aesthetic. Her interpretations of the Etudes may not match Piers Lane’s (Hyperion) for sheer speed and suavity, yet her slower tempos and more pointed double notes allow for better harmonic clarity and melodic shaping.
Annie Petit joins Dosse in the four-hand and two-piano works (highlighted by sharply etched performances of the Beethoven Variations Op. 35 and the unabashedly empty-headed, overlong Polonaise Op. 77), plus a less than world-class romp through the Carnival of the Animals. The engineering ranges from warm and atmospheric to uncomfortably close-up and brittle. These 1974 recordings plugged a significant catalog gap in the vinyl era, and keep doing so in the age of digital.
