Saint-Saëns: Aquarium from The Carnival of the Animals

Saint-Saëns had no intention of publicly releasing The Carnival of the Animals. During his lifetime he only gave private performances to his close friends and only allowed the movement Le cygne (The Swan) to be performed in public by itself. Just over two months following Saint-Saëns’s death, the first public premiere took place, and from that point the suite quickly became one of the French composer’s favourite works.

Saint-Saëns adored animals and it was occasionally joked that he preferred the company of animals to people. He wrote The Carnival of the Animals in early 1886 as a suite of fourteen movements, each based on a different theme or animal. This delicate and magical seventh movement, exactly half-way through the suite, is called Aquarium.