Camille Saint-Saëns allowed only private performances of The Carnival of the Animals during his lifetime and stipulated it be published in full only after his death.
Album & Artwork
The album title "Connotations" refers to the musical codes and hidden meanings the composers, Dmitri Shostakovich, Alban Berg, and Camille Saint-Saëns, wove into their works.
Composition History
Camille Saint-Saëns composed The Carnival of the Animals, a suite of fourteen miniature tone-poems, on a whim in a small Austrian village in February 1886.
Performer Biography
Pianist Mei Yi Foo, the album's featured soloist, is the winner of the 2013 BBC Music Magazine's Best Newcomer award and works regularly with living composers.
Compositional Technique
Alban Berg's Chamber Concerto for piano and violin with thirteen wind instruments encodes the names of Berg and his close friends Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern into its notation.
Composition History
Dmitri Shostakovich's Concerto for piano, trumpet and strings was premiered in Leningrad in December 1933.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Pianist Mei Yi Foo describes the album as a "musical game of hide-and-seek," where the composers hide cryptic messages and she, as the performer, seeks them out.
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Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals
Prokofiev: The Piano Concertos/Violin Concertos etc
