Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22

Program notes

About the Work

Camille Saint-Saëns wrote his Second Piano Concerto in a hurry. In the spring of 1868 the Russian pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein was in Paris and wanted to appear there as a conductor, with Saint-Saëns as his soloist. The date that suited was about three weeks off. Saint-Saëns agreed to write a new concerto for the occasion and finished it in seventeen days. He played the solo part himself at the first performance, in the Salle Pleyel on 13 May 1868, with Rubinstein conducting.

The speed showed on the night. Saint-Saëns had had little time to practise what he had written, and the reception was mixed, though the second movement was liked at once and Liszt, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s account, admired the work. It went on to become the most popular of his five piano concertos.

Its shape is unusual. A concerto normally runs fast, slow, fast. This one begins with a broad, serious movement, puts a scherzo in second place and ends with a very fast finale, so that it has been described as a symphony with its first movement missing. Each movement is quicker and lighter than the last, which is why the concerto can seem to change character completely between its first page and its final one. Saint-Saëns was thirty-two, organist of the Madeleine in Paris and one of the finest pianists of his day, and the piece draws on both careers. The main theme of the first movement is said to have been borrowed from his pupil Gabriel Fauré, from a ‘Tantum ergo’ that Fauré had set aside.

What to Listen For

I. Andante sostenuto. The piano begins alone, with a long passage that sounds improvised, in the manner of a Bach organ fantasia. It is easy to imagine a held pedal note with the hands roaming above it. The orchestra enters with force, and the piano then gives out the restless main theme. The movement builds to a loud return of that theme and a solo cadenza, and the Bach-like opening comes back at the end, now with the orchestra beneath it.

II. Allegro scherzando. A soft chord and a tapping figure on the timpani set the pace. The piano’s first tune is light and quick; a second, broader tune appears low down, in the bassoons and lower strings. This was the movement the first audience liked best, and it ends as lightly as it began.

III. Presto. A headlong dance in the rhythm of a tarantella, back in G minor. The piano starts it with a rumble low in the keyboard and scarcely stops afterwards. A second idea, marked by a trill and repeated many times, gives a brief change of texture before the rush to the close.