Saint-Saëns' 'Organ' Symphony

Experience the best of French classical music in this dazzling display of symphonic colour.

‘Tap, tap, tap – Death rhythmically / Taps a tomb with his heel,’ wrote Camille Saint-Saëns atop the score to his Danse macabre. In this miniature tone-poem creaking skeletons dance among gravestones to the satanic scraping of Death’s violin. No less fanciful is the suite from Maurice Ravel’s ballet Mother Goose, which draws on the rich French fairytale tradition, evoking faraway kingdoms and mystical creatures with a dazzling array of colours and effects.

We tread water with a pair of orchestral interludes from the 1880s: Augusta Holmès’ hypnotic nocturne La nuit et l’amour sees two expansive melodies coalesce like lovers in passionate embrace, while a raucous party gets under way in the Fête polonaise, a glittering vignette from Emmanuel Chabrier’s comic opera Le roi malgré lui.

The pipes of Huddersfield Town Hall’s famous ‘Father’ Willis organ provide the evening’s climax: in his monumental ‘Organ’ Symphony, Saint-Saëns poured all the elements of his long career as an organist and composer into one piece. ‘I gave everything to it I was able to give,’ he wrote. Plainsong and complex fugues combine with bubbling orchestral textures and a thumping organ solo in this pillar of the French repertoire.