Where can I download "The Swan" by Saint-Saëns?

Cafe Society
1

Greetings.

I’m looking for a free, high-quality recording of Le Cygne (“The Swan”) by Camille Saint-Saëns which I can download as an Ogg Vorbis or MP3 file. Does anyone know of such a recording in the public domain or released under a permissive license?

So far the only one I’ve been able to find is a 1924 recording with poor audio quality (lots of hiss).

Attention well-meaning Googlers (Q.E.D., etc.): please verify that any links you find actually work. I’ve just spent half an hour combing through Google results for ‘“le cygne” mp3’ and many of them are pages full of broken links or are just bait for pay sites.

2

I see you are in the U.K. Any pre-1972 U.S. recording is not protected under U.S. copyright law. Surely someone has a pre-'72 recording?

3

I found this page on garageband.com (of all places) that has a pretty good recording of the track available for free download. Unfortunately I can’t find the Ts&Cs just at the minute, so I don’t know how you’d stand with respect to playing the track to an audience, for example. Are you just planning to play it publically, or are you creating a derivative work?

4

No, I just want to listen to it privately. The copyright license therefore need only permit copying for private home use.

5

I just downloaded it; sounds good! (When you said it was from a site called “garageband.com”, I was worried that it was going to be some weird rock-and-roll interpretation, whereas I was looking for one played in the classical style.)