Camille Saint-Saëns remains a fascinating composer not just for his iconic body of work, but for the breadth of his life and experience. He was born within a decade of Beethoven’s and Schubert’s deaths, lived to hear Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and left an impression on the Chilean-American pianist Claudio Arrau.

Naxos, which previously offered an idiomatic performance of the Third Concerto by Dong-Suk Kang (Naxos 8.550752), has now released all three together. Fanny Clamagirand, the young violinist assigned to the project, plays the Third Concerto with Grumiaux’s insinuating sweetness... That comparison endures through the first movement, which Clamagirand plays boldly but mellifluously, through the second, into which she introduces a gently rocking, wistful melancholy equal to Grumiaux’s (concluding with a redolent rendition of the duet for violin in harmonics and clarinet), and the finale (in which she seems at once more playful and more relaxed than did Grumiaux). In general, she draws a warm tone, particularly throaty in the lower registers, from the 1700 Matteo Gofriller violin upon which she plays, even if the instrument doesn’t always seem sufficiently capacious tonally for the finale’s opening dramatic declamation. Patrick Gallois and the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä accompany her as atmospherically as Fournet and the Lamoureux Orchestra did Grumiaux.

While Ricci took the opening chords of the First Concerto as an invitation to slash and burn, Clamagirand breaks them in a more leisurely, if not quite indolent, manner. (That’s the beginning and the end of her idiosyncratic ideas in this concerto.) As did Thibaud (in a live performance on both Malibran-Music 150 and APR 5644, Fanfare 28:1), she realizes much of the opulent sensuousness of the subsidiary theme, but even though Thibaud’s game may have been a bit off live in 1953, Clamagirand’s surely isn’t, so the seductiveness doesn’t seem so much like a decadent, guilty pleasure. Again and again, one of her subtle gestures (no flamboyant swooping here) seems to speak volumes, and the purity of her tone in the upper registers enhances the impact of a phrase.

In the opening of the Second Concerto, in which the violin sweeps along virtuosically before striking a more expressive vein, Clamagirand makes a stronger impact than did Ricci, whose equally virtuosic though less opulent manner created from these passages more a dry, leaf-scattering autumn wind rather than a humid summer gust. Still, many may feel that even Clamagirand’s sympathetic approach (which rises to the heroic in the first movement and luxuriates lyrically in the second) can’t breathe life into the less strongly characterized thematic material, particularly perhaps in the finale.

…Clamagirand makes as strong and idiomatic an impression (except perhaps for what might seem to be her ungainly entrance in the First Concerto), and violinistically, even a stronger one at climactic moments.

Strongly recommended for its soaring performances, in lively recorded sound. Fanny Clamagirand seems to have all the prerequisites for a strong violinistic personality—at least as strong as Grumiaux’s or Stern’s. Time after time, I listen to performances that seem convincing until I check my impressions by listenimore....

Bienvenido este compacto con los conciertos para violín del “Mendelsshon francés”. El más popular es el Tercero, que irrumpe de inmediato con sus marcadas notas en el violín ejecutando el primer tema; ya nos hemos dado cuenta de que estamos ante una importante instrumentista. Su sonido es de una calidez y una luminosidad encomiables. Su fraseo es fluido, delicado y emotivo (la tierna y lírica exposición del segundo tema, con aires cíngaros, así lo demuestra). Inefable la dulzura que exhala esa página, a modo de barcarola, que es el segundo tiempo, Andantino quasi allegretto. Finaliza con un enérgico y nervioso movimiento que tiene un momento de elevación o éxtasis en el coral que nos recuerda un pasaje de Lohengrin. El Concierto núm. 1, de un sólo movimiento, da paso al Núm. 2 (en realidad el primero de los tres, en el orden de composición) menos conocido pero de una indudable categoría; refinado virtuosismo del primer tiempo, inspiración melódica del segundo y vitalidad contagiosa del rondo (con una excitante sección contrapuntística), rematado en una brillante coda. La Sinfonia Finlandia, con Patrick Gallois al frente, no tiene fisuras. Admirables en todos los aspectos.

Fanny Clamagirand is a French violinist who turns 27 this April and has been studying and playing the violin since she was 7 years old: the Naxos notes credit her as “one of the best violinists of her generation” and I see no reason to demur. Since her debut she has won numerous awards, among them the Yehudi Menuhin Special Prize in 2000, First Prize at the 2005 Fritz Kreisler Competition in Vienna and again at the Monte Carlo Violin Masters Competition two years later.

Opportunities to hear her on records are sparse. Her violin sonatas of Ysaye never reached us. But we favorably greeted an earlier Marco Polo CD of music by Georges Taconet.

This recording has a lot of competition. Even Naxos have two other versions of the Third Concerto available: Grumiaux in their Classical Archives series (9.80608), and the 1994 Dong-Suk Kang recording (8.550752), which might well have been the first version owned by many listeners. Does it make sense to market another CD of these works, particularly of the Third? In the current financial climate, almost certainly not—neither Fanny Clamagirand nor the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä, nor indeed Patrick Gallois, can really be considered names sufficiently ‘big’ to trigger loyalty buying.

Though it was the least well received by its intended dedicatee—Pablo de Sarasate—the third violin concerto of Camille Saint-Saëns has endured as one of his most popular concertos along with the A minor Cello Concerto and the Third Piano Concerto. The earlier two violin concertos, each written some 20 years before, are still noteworthy, lively concertos, but lack the same emotional impact and maturity of the seasoned B minor Concerto. What they may lack in depth is made up for with pyrotechnic virtuosic displays, perhaps explaining Sarasate’s fondness. This Naxos album places the B minor Concerto first, ending with the C major Concerto, a program order that curiously seems to place the bigger “bang” finish at the beginning, closing with a less emphatic note. Regardless of the order in which listeners enjoys the three concertos, the performances given by violinist Fanny Clamagirand and the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä under Patrick Gallois are each delivered with equal amounts of precision, warmth, and vitality. Clamagirand’s playing in particular is extremely nimble and dazzling, something both Sarasate and Saint-Saëns would have been proud of. Her sound is not exceptionally big, however, and the recording would certainly have benefitted by increasing her sound level. As it stands, the orchestra too frequently obscures Clamagirand’s otherwise memorable playing.

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was once called the French Mendelssohn. Musically, he was extremely intelligent and well read and both a futurist and a traditionalist valuing Baroque composers as much as current ones. Play all!