Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) – Piano Concerto No. 2

Saint-Saëns the composer was both prodigious and prolific. Like Mozart, he started as a talented toddler who, as he grew, brought his pot to the boil, and thereafter kept it simmering. Saint-Saëns the performer was one of his generation’s top ivory-ticklers, a star of piano and (especially) organ. He was also a classic case of the fridge-magnet witticism: “Middle age is when a broad mind and a narrow waist swap adjectives.”

In his youth, this friend of Berlioz and Liszt was a staunch supporter of the revolutionaries of the Romantic. He himself acquired a reputation as a dangerous radical, one who in 1869 delighted in causing a right old ruckus with his Third Piano Concerto’s outrageous harmonies.

Advancing years, though, withered his zeal, and migrated him to the opposite pole – a staunch conservative who witnessed the 1913 première of Le Sacre du Printemps and was NOT amused, and who generally railed – with perhaps greater liberality than becomes a staunch conservative – against the “atrocities” of emergent moderns.

As befits his natural talent, Saint-Saëns worked fluently and accurately, the majority of his 300-odd works gliding gracefully onto the manuscript with enviable ease. This was just as well! In 1868, whilst in Paris playing concertos under Saint-Saëns’s baton, Anton Rubinstein was taken by a sudden whim – to make his Parisian CONDUCTING debut, with his esteemed conductor as soloist. Since the concert date was already set, and (for some obscure reason) a new concerto was deemed essential, this whim gave Saint-Saëns a mind-bogglingly mere three weeks to deliver the goods.

As it happened, the goods – his Second Piano Concerto – were delivered in 17 days flat. However, slightly un-boggling our minds, this still left him sorely short of rehearsal time; his consequently scrappy performance secured the work a generally poor initial reception.

To be fair, Saint-Saëns did get by with a little help from his friend (and student). He’d hardly set pen to paper when Fauré turned up, to show him his latest compositional exercise, a Tantum Ergo. Saint-Saëns’s eyes lit up. “Give it to me, I can make something of this!” (I hope he said “please”). He was as good as his word. The cadged theme duly went into the concerto – but, sadly, Fauré’s inspirational exercise went into the bin.

Liszt may be the biggest single influence, but Saint-Saëns’s consummate formal craftsmanship and penchant for fleetness, whether featherlight or forceful, surely owe much to Mendelssohn’s shining example. Although both these influences are abundantly evident, this concerto’s stunning attractiveness owes nothing to anybody but its creator, and, over the years, has captivated legions of music-lovers.

Pretty music is indeed as effective at turning heads as pretty faces. Yet, although we may not know the “why” or “how”, most of us can sense whether a work’s beauty is skin-deep, through that ineffable “presence” distinguishing truly great from merely good music. Knowledge doesn’t amplify your love of music, but it can increase your admiration of the mind that created it. So, in what follows I can safely leave all the loving to you!

1. Andante sostenuto opens with a Bach-style introduction for the soloist, joined by the orchestra only at its climax. The musing main subject (let’s call it Fauré) proceeds, via a gruff figure (piano, strings), to a similarly musing second subject. A skittering development generates a climactic reprise of Fauré. The cadenza, meditating on both subjects plus the gruff figure, passes seamlessly into a coda partially reprising the introduction. This looks like a sonata-form. But, as we all know, appearances can be deceptive.

It’s fairly obvious that Fauré’s tail-end spawns the gruff figure, but perhaps less obvious that its lilting accompaniment spawns the “second subject”, which itself spawns the “skittering” cell. Thus, the ENTIRE thematic stock is struck from, not Fauré, but Fauré’s periphery. Yet, even more ingenious is the “cross-fade” from cadenza to coda, where Saint-Saëns draws back a curtain, revealing that the “baroque” introduction’s basis is the very core (notes 3-6) of Fauré!

Far from resting on his laurels, Saint-Saëns has yet more to make of Fauré, which similarly informs the thematic materials of both the remaining movements:

2. Allegro scherzando. This beguiling movement, tip-toeing through the tulips as daintily as Mendelssohn’s Midsummer fairies, is a simple rondeau (ABC-ABC-ABC-A). C’s pianistic cascades contrast the melodious A and B, both lightly spiced with continual variation, and the latter initiated by a saucy, lowbrow piano “vamp”. Have piano and orchestra ever gambolled together more gaily than this?

3. Presto . . . and has there ever been a more torrential tarantella? Like the similarly seething finale of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, its ferocity is contained within a disciplined sonata form – here we get a fully-fledged development section, doing double-duty as the eye of the storm. The full, literal reprise culminates in uproarious pianistic clangour. This pounding prelude to the coda proper might seem gratuitous. But, ask yourself: does it – or doesn’t it – derive from you-know-what?

Actually better than his word, Saint-Saëns made, not just something of the melody, but EVERYTHING of it. Hence, it’s no wonder that these dramatically disparate movements “vent très bien ensemble”. Nevertheless, even as we applaud Saint-Saëns’s evident genius, shouldn’t we save a special cheer for his young protégé?

© Paul Serotsky, 2012

 

 

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