This wonderful work by the famous French pianist and composer Camille Saint-Saëns is popularly known as “The Egyptian.” As the last of his piano concertos, Piano Concerto No. 5 was composed in 1896 in the Egyptian city of Luxor. It was composed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Saint-Saëns’s debut at Salle Pleyel in Paris at the age of eleven. 

Saint-Saëns loved to travel and referred to this work as a “sea voyage;” accordingly, the concerto boasts exotic musical influences from the Middle East, Java and Egypt. Throughout the second movement, Saint-Saëns dramatically captures the dazzling sounds of the Arabic scale, the Javanese gamelan and the Egyptian song from Nubia (which Saint-Saëns heard while traveling on an Egyptian boat dahabeah on the Nile). Following the alluring second movement, the third movement provides an unrelenting, exhilarating finale to the concerto. Needless to say, Saint-Saëns successfully leads the audience through an exciting musical voyage in this piano concerto through the use of brilliant musical colors and virtuosity.