Steve Schwartz wrote:

>Camille Saint-Saens wrote a prodigious amount of music, in every genre.
>To me, you can have all of it except the Danse macabre,

That's the piece I learned first, got tired of, and wrote off the
composer on account of.  Since then I have liked his concerti increasingly
and, especially, the First Piano Concerto.  (Yes, I know, the second
gets more credit, but that horn introduction is splendid, and since I
do not recall hearing it when young I never burned out on it.) I also
find the Organ Symphony thrilling, and I don't mean just the fortissimo
parts.  When I was in college, one of my professors asked one day which
French composer was the best: Berlioz, Saint Saens or Debussy.  My
response was an immediate, well, certainly not Saint Saens, but, oddly,
for me he became an acquired taste..

>the late sonatas for wind instruments, .

I don't know those; something to discover.

>The rest of it is fun and high spirits, and you can't get enough of
>that in classical music,

Yes.

>So I pretty much write off every performance with a narrator (almost
>always a terrible reader besides).

It is good to hear the narration once, so you know what is going on: in
the glacial can-can, for instance.

>Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, although I keep longing in my heart
>of hearts to hear the Prokofiev without the words.

I once heard on the radio a delicious version by that Crocodile Dundee
chap, in down under language, but I have never found a copy of the
recording.  Bernstein does a great job with the instrumental version.

Jim Tobin