Saint-Saëns: Piano concerto No.5 in F major., opus 103, 'The Egyptian'

 

 

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (French: [ʃaʁl kamij sɛ̃ sɑ̃(s)];[n 1] 9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Second Piano Concerto (1868), the First Cello Concerto (1872), Danse macabre (1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886).

Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. After leaving the post twenty years later, he was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in demand in Europe and the Americas.

As a young man, Saint-Saëns was enthusiastic for the most modern music of the day, particularly that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner, although his own compositions were generally within a conventional classical tradition. He was a scholar of musical history, and remained committed to the structures worked out by earlier French composers. This brought him into conflict in his later years with composers of the impressionist and dodecaphonic schools of music; although there were neoclassical elements in his music, foreshadowing works by Stravinsky and Les Six, he was often regarded as a reactionary in the decades around the time of his death.

Saint-Saëns held only one teaching post, at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse in Paris, and remained there for less than five years. It was nevertheless important in the development of French music: his students included Gabriel Fauré, among whose own later pupils was Maurice Ravel. Both of them were strongly influenced by Saint-Saëns, whom they revered as a genius.

 

라틴적 아름다움을 추구했던 교양인 , 샤를 카미유 생상스

19세기 프랑스를 대표하는 작곡가이자 피아니스트, 오르가니스트였으며, 시작이나 극작에도 능한 전형적인 교양인이었다. | 샤를 카미유 생상스는 1835년에 프랑스 파리에서 태어났다. 어려서부터 음악에 소질을 보여 5살 때 베토벤 〈바이올린 소나타〉의...음악사를 움직인 100인

 

Piano concerto No.5 in F major., opus 103, 'The Egyptian'

 

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelsons
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano
Recorded the 16th of November 2011, Concertgebouw Amsterdam

 

 

The Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, Op. 103, popularly known as The Egyptian, was Camille Saint-Saëns' last piano concerto. He wrote it in 1896, 20 years after his Fourth Piano Concerto, to play himself at his own Jubilee Concert on May 6 of that year. This concert celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his début at the Salle Pleyel in 1846.

 

This concerto is nicknamed "The Egyptian" for two reasons. Firstly, Saint-Saëns composed it in the temple town of Luxor while on one of his frequent winter vacations to Egypt, and secondly, the music is among his most exotic, displaying influences from Javanese and Spanish as well as Middle-eastern music. Saint-Saëns said that the piece represented a sea voyage.

Saint-Saëns himself was the soloist at the première, which was a popular and critical success.

 

Structure and overview

1. Allegro animato

   The Allegro animato alternates several times between two contrasting themes. It begins warmly, introducing a simple subject on the piano, which is imbued at each new variation with increasing energy by a brilliant and technically challenging piano part featuring runs up and down the keyboard. This dissolves into a much slower, more melancholic subject, recalling that of the Andante sostenuto movement of Saint-Saëns' second piano concerto. Like waves, the two lead into one another until finally the second theme gives way to a gentle coda.

2. Andante

   The Andante, traditionally the slow and expressive movement in concerto form, begins literally with a bang; the timpani punctuate an orchestral chord followed by an intensely rhythmic string part and an ascending and descending exotic run on the piano. This exciting introduction segues into the thematic exposition based on a Nubian love song that Saint-Saëns heard boatmen sing as he sailed on the Nile in a 'dahabiah' boat. Lush and exotic, this is the primary manifestation of the Egyptian sounds of the piece and probably the source of the nickname. Toward the end of the section, the piano and orchestra produce impressionistic sounds representing frogs and the chirping of Nile crickets.

3. Molto allegro

   The soloist begins the third Molto allegro with low rumbles suggesting the sounds of ships' propellers before exhibiting a vigorous and bustling first theme that rushes all over the piano. The piano continues in its dizzying motion as the woodwinds and strings bring in a driving new melody. The two combine and overlap, creating an active tension that Saint-Saëns uses to great dramatic effect, concluding the movement with a triumphant flourish. He later adapted these themes in 1899 for the Toccata that closes the Opus 111 series of piano études.