Camille Saint-Saëns and the Prix de Rome… surely a strange bringing together of ideas, given that the composer never gained that coveted award and consequently never took up residence in the famous Villa Medici? Saint-Saëns entered the competition on two separate occasions, peculiarly in the history of the competition, 12 years apart: firstly in 1852 and then in 1864. On the first occasion he was still an adolescent, devoted to worshipping the memory of Mendelssohn; whilst by the time of the second occasion, he had several masterpieces under his belt, plus he had become acquainted with Verdi and Wagner.

If the music he composed for the competition in 1864 was not deemed worthy of being awarded a prize, perhaps that was due to it being full of a troubling and disquieting sense of modernity: there is clearly nothing that the cantata Ivanhoé need fear in a comparison with Il Trovatore.

Hervé Niquet, the Brussels Philharmonic and Glossa now present the second volume in their survey of music composed for the Prix de Rome, with the majority of such pieces being previously unrecorded and absolutely crying out to become much better-known.

Contents:
CD 1
- Ivanhoé (cantata, 1864)
- Le Retour de Virginie (cantata, 1852)

CD 2
- Ode (1864) Choeur de Sylphes (1852)
- Messe Op.4 (1857, extraits)
- Motets au Saint Sacrement

Recorded in Antwerp (Koningin Elisabethzaal), Heverlee (Jezuïetenkerk) and Brussels (Flagey) in Feb, March and Oct 2010.