Saint-Saëns’ Sérénade d’hiver, written for choir of four male voice parts in 1867 and published the following year, provided ‘Orphéonistes’ with a delightful showpiece, one that revels in the playful assonance and suggestive lines in Henri Cazalis’ poem. It’s hard to credit that the masked chorus singing so lustily here beneath a lady’s window is solely populated with ‘gentle men, Full of honour and courtesy’!

from notes by Andrew Stewart © 2009