The curiosity here is the Duc de Guise music. Since Saint-Saens was born in 1835, before Tchaikovsky and Dvorak, we think of him as a nineteenth-century figure, yet here he was in 1908 writing a film score for a silent biopic made by one Henri Lavedan—''the earliest piece of film music in the history of the cinema'', says the booklet essay. It falls into five tableaux lasting some 20 minutes and is well worth a listen as an example of how this resourceful and experienced composer created expressionistic mood and action music that still stands up on its own. The murder takes place in the fourth tableau, a surprisingly jaunty affair. As in the Carnaval des animaux it uses a biggish ensemble, but we are not told what instruments are involved. Otherwise, the booklet is informative about this fascinating, faintly tragi-comic work.
It is also useful on the Piano Quintet, which belongs to the other end of Saint-Saens's life, having been written in 1855. The music tells us this at once, having some youthful grandiloquence along with plenty of burgeoning skill, not least as regards construction. It is melodious and distinctly attractive: indeed, the Andante sostenuto is lovely, and the scherzo could almost be by Mendelssohn. Both of these performances are sympathetic and skilful, earning this issue a warm welcome. It goes without saying that in this context the Carnaval des animaux comes over as the big chamber music that it is, rather than orchestrally as we sometimes hear it; these French artists play it with enormous zest and an idiomatic sense of fun. A refined recording is a further plus to this delightful disc.'