Concerto No. 4 In C Minor For Piano And Orchestra / Trois Morceaux En Forme De Poire (Three Pieces In The Shape Of A Pear)

This 1977 release by Columbia Special Products serves as a reissue compilation pairing Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 4 with Erik Satie’s Trois Morceaux en forme de poire. The concerto, composed by Saint-Saëns in 1875, is noted for its cyclic form and structural ingenuity, while Satie’s 1903 suite is a quintessential example of his minimalist, ironic aesthetic. These recordings feature the husband-and-wife duo Robert and Gaby Casadesus, whose collaborative performance of the Satie works is celebrated for its technical precision and rhythmic clarity.

The recording of the Saint-Saëns concerto features Robert Casadesus performing with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York under the direction of Artur Rodzinski. This archival material captures a mid-20th-century interpretation of French Romanticism that emphasized a lean, unsentimental approach to phrasing. By the time of this 1977 reissue, the Casadesus family had long established a definitive legacy in the performance of the French piano repertoire, and the pairing of these specific works highlighted both the virtuosic demands of the concerto and the whimsical, avant-garde sensibilities of Satie.