Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

[1868]

The extraordinarily long and rich career of Camille Saint-Saëns began in the late 1850s, when his gifts as a piano and organ virtuoso won over important champions like Berlioz and Liszt. In the spring of 1868, Saint-Saëns played host to one of the world’s other leading pianists, Anton Rubinstein of Russia, who performed a series of concerts in Paris accompanied by an orchestra that Saint-Saëns conducted. On a lark, Rubinstein declared that he wanted to make his debut as a conductor in Paris, and that Saint-Saëns should write and perform a piano concerto for the occasion. They booked a date just three weeks out, and Saint-Saëns got to work composing his Piano Concerto No. 2.

In crafting a complete piano concerto on such a tight timeline, Saint-Saëns leaned on the art of improvisation he had mastered as an organist, a tradition that stretched back to Bach and beyond. The extended introduction that begins the Andante sostenuto first movement is a pianist’s rendering of an improvised organ prelude, complete with counterpoint in the manner of Bach and the sustained “pedal points” that organists could hold indefinitely with their feet. After such an imposing introduction, this unusually slow and introspective first movement emphasizes lyrical melodies and balanced exchanges with the orchestra, including the main theme that Saint-Saëns derived from a composition exercise brought to him by his student Gabriel Fauré.

Any pathos lingering from the first movement gets swept away by the Allegro scherzando that follows, with the timpani ushering in a main theme as airy and ephemeral as a soufflé fresh from the oven. The Presto finale then returns to the original key of G-minor with feisty music that resembles a tarantella, the whirlwind Italian folk dance purported to ward off the poison of a tarantula bite. The first edition of the score provided easier alternatives for the soloist in some of the finale’s most fiendish passages, but we can presume that Saint-Saëns allowed himself no such shortcut, despite finishing this composition mere days before the premiere.

Solo piano; two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, percussion, strings