ÿþ<html> <head> <title>Forest Hill Chamber Music Festival 2004</title> <style> a:link {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:active {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:visited {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:hover {color:000000;text-decoration: none} </style> </head> <body bgColor=ffffff topmargin=15 leftmargin=0 text=555555 link=000000 alink=000000 vlink=000000> <center> <a href="index.html"><img src="title01w.gif" border=0></a><BR> <BR><font size=3> { <a href="p1.html">6/11</a> &nbsp; <a href="p2.html">6/12</a> &nbsp; <a href="p3.html">6/13</a> &nbsp; <a href="p4.html">6/13</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="artists.html">artists</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="notes.html">program notes</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="photos.html">photos</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="contact.html">tickets</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="ack.html">acknowledgements</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="intro.html">about</a> } <BR><BR><BR> <table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0> <TR> <Td align=right valign=top> <table border=0 cellpadding=15 cellspacing=0><TR><TD align=right> <a href="n01-bach.html">Johann Sebastian Bach </a><BR> <a href="n02-beet.html">Ludwig van Beethoven </a><BR> <a href="n03-berg.html">Alban Maria Johannes Berg </a><BR> <a href="n14-druk.html">Jacob Raphael Druckman </a><BR> <a href="n04-dvor.html">Antonín DvoYák </a><BR> <a href="n05-hind.html">Paul Hindemith </a><BR> <a href="n06-mech.html">Kirke Mechem</a><BR> <a href="n07-mess.html">Olivier Messiaen</a><BR> <a href="n08-moza.html">Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart </a><BR> <a href="n09-rohde.html">Kurt Rohde</a><BR> <a href="n10-ss.html">Charles Camille Saint-Saëns </a><BR> <a href="n11-scho.html">Arnold Schönberg </a><BR> <a href="n12-schub.html">Franz Peter Schubert </a><BR> <a href="n13-schum.html">Robert Schumann</a><BR> </td></tr></table> </td> <TD valign=top> <img src="black.gif" width=1 height=310><BR> </td> <TD valign=top width=500> <Table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=15><TR><TD> <font size=5><center><b>Charles Camille Saint-Saëns</b><font size=2><br><i> b. 1835 Paris, France; d. 1921 Algiers, Algeria</i></center><font size=3><br><br> <b>The Carnival of the Animals  Grand Zoological Fantasy (1886) <br>With verses by Ogden Nash (1902 1974) (introduced in 1954)</b><br> <br> It would give great pains to Camille Saint-Saëns if he were to know that of all his enormous output of musical compositions in virtually every genre,  Carnival of the Animals may be his best known and most popular work. (And no, that opener does not rhyme, as you will learn from the narration.) <br><br>Saint-Saëns wrote the piece for a private <i>Faschings</i> (pre-Lenten) party but then, somewhat shocked at his own expression of wit, he feared it would ruin his reputation as a serious composer. The work pokes good-natured fun at contemporaries such as Offenbach, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Rossini. <br><br>He forbade further performances of it until after his death, and none of it, except the cello solo,  The Swan, was published in his lifetime. <br><br>Saint-Saëns was a frail child, suffering from tuberculosis, but was blessed with tireless energy, brilliant memory, and perfect pitch. By the time he was ten years old, he was sufficiently accomplished at the piano to tour Paris, performing recitals of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. <br><br>His sight reading was amazing, and Liszt even said that he was the greatest organist in the world. Berlioz called him  one of the greatest musicians of our epoch. He composed in excess of 300 works, including 13 operas, and was one of the first composers to write music especially for cinema. <br><br>Troubles in his later life  an unsuccessful marriage to a woman half his age and the death of two young children within six weeks of each other, one from a four-story fall, one from illness  neither deterred his wide-ranging intellectual pursuits nor appear to have had any discernible influence on his musical compositions. <br><br>The now seemingly inevitable and perfect marriage of musical and verbal wit in pairing the verses of Ogden Nash with Saint-Saëns  Carnival was instigated by conductor André Kostelanetz, who encouraged Nash to write original verses not only for this work, but also for Ravel s  Mother Goose Suite and Prokofiev s  Peter and the Wolf. Noel Coward delivered the new verses on the original 1954 Columbia LP conducted by Kostelanetz. <br><br>Nash s first published poems began to appear in <i>The New Yorker</i> around 1930. His first collection of poems, <i>Hard Lines,</i> was published in 1931 to tremendous success. He frequently contributed poems to periodicals including <i>Harper s, The Saturday Evening Post, Life, and Vogue.</i> <br><br>Nash considered himself a  worsifier. Among his best known lines are  Candy / Is dandy, / But liquor / Is quicker and  If called by a panther / Don t anther. He was also the author of three screenplays for MGM, and with S. J. Perelman, wrote the 1943 Broadway hit,  One Touch of Venus. <br> </td></tr></table> </td> </tr> </table> </body></html>