Six Italians and one Frenchman: a consummate realisation of Saint-Saëns’s multifaceted musical idiom. For its latest CD featuring works by Camille Saint-Saëns, the award-winning Quartetto di Cremona draws on sixteen years of giving concerts and making recordings. Leading Italian pianist Andrea Lucchesini joins the ensemble for the Piano Quintet: the third movement of the work is presented here in the rare version adding a double bass (ad lib.).

These two chamber music works of the French composer represent crucial stages in his oeuvre: the Piano Quintet, a work of early perfection, demonstrates Saint-Saëns’s engagement with German Romanticism, particularly with Robert Schumann and his formal idiom. The String Quartet, marking the transition into his late style, represents the first chamber piece in which Saint-Saëns leaves out his own instrument, the piano. Here, his version of the classical style – clear forms and a colourful expressive spectrum – becomes especially clear. Brilliance and an unerring sense of form; calm, melancholy resting and energetic gestures; romantic vocal qualities and exquisite compositional art – the contrasts characterising Saint-Saëns’s musical idiom are perfectly realised by the Quartetto di Cremona.