Fantaisies de Concert

The appeal of the Carmen fantasy, with which this collection opens, has remained the most enduring but, perhaps reflecting the varying fortunes with audiences of the operas themselves, settings of Gounod’s Faust and Roméo et Juliette, or Weber’s Der Freischütz are ready for reappraisal today as similarly exhilarating exercises in Romantic violin technique.

As an example of Sarasate’s equally successful and more purely lyrical “salon” style of composition, his Rêverie, Op.4 is alsoincluded here.