Attente

Hugo’s appeal as a prophet of romanticism was by no mean restricted to his compatriots. One of the first composers to realise his musical potential was none other than Richard Wagner, who set L’Attente from Les orientales in Paris in 1839 and sketched two others (Extase and La tombe dit à la rose) from the same collection at about the same time. L’Attente - which Saint-Saëns was to set rather more thoughtfully sixteen years later but, surely, not without a memory of Wagner’s ostinato piano rhythms and robust left-hand - is all raw energy.