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Work

Dance Macabre (Saint-Saëns) : (yet to be assigned)

by Wendy Hiscocks (2003)

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The Australian Music Centre's catalogue does not include any recordings or sheet music of this work. This entry is for information purposes only.

It is listed in our catalogue because an event featuring a performance of this work was included in our calendar of Australian music. Details of this performance are listed below.

Work Overview

Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre has long been available in the composer's own sizzling transcription for two pianos. By contrast, the standard piano duet arrangement of the piece (by Ernest Guiraud) appears to have been derived from the orchestral score and is often disappointingly thin. An obvious solution was to make the present new duet arrangement, following the composer's two-piano version as closely as possible. It was premiered by the Howat-Hiscocks Duo (Roy Howat & Wendy Hiscocks) at the 2003 Windsor Festival in England.

As a symphonic poem, Danse Macabre was elaborated (in 1874) from Saint-Saens' earlier song-setting of a poem by Henri Cazalis - a sort of French Tom O'Shanter without the chase, in which the devil, playing a mistuned fiddle, conjures skeletons from their graves at midnight into a macabre dance (Cazalis' profession as a doctor doubtless fed his imagination). Saint-Saens' orchestral version was the first orchestral score to use a xylophone, in a tune that he later recycled for "Fossils" in Carnaval des Animaux. (notes by Roy Howat)

Work Details

Year: 2003

Instrumentation: Piano duet.

Difficulty: Advanced

First performance: by Wendy Hiscocks, Roy Howat — 2003. Windsor Festival, England.

Performances of this work

4 Sep 2009: at From Melbourne to Paris and Back (Studio Raspail).

2003: Windsor Festival, England.. Featuring Wendy Hiscocks, Roy Howat.

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