Saint-Saëns: Concert for piano # 2

Tonality

Minor sun.

Instruments

• Solista: piano.
• Orchestra: wood to two, tubes, trumpets, timbals, saucers and rope.

From the atril

Saint- Saëns composed this concert in just a few weeks of 1868, for a concert led in Paris by the great Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein. It premiered at the Salle Pleyel with Saint- Saëns himself at the piano, and the lack of essay made the first audience receive it coldly. Today is the most played of his five piano concerts.

Its shape is unusual: instead of starting fast, it opens with a great piano cadence only in the style of a Bach fantasy, and the movements are accelerating to a final rolling tarantela. Hence the famous joke that the concert «It starts as Bach and ends as Offenbach». Between them, a light and sparkling scherzo, of a very French grace.

What to hear

• The initial cadence of the piano, solemn and almost baroque.
• The Allegro scherando, light and juicy.
• The final Presto tarantella.