Sunday Classics preview: Saint-Saëns sure didn't write the same piano concerto five times

SAINT-SAËNS: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22: Opening

Emil Gilels, piano; Paris Conservatory Orchestra, André Cluytens, cond. EMI, recorded Mar. 11, 1954

by Ken

This week we're continuing with some ongoing business: Saint-Saëns's Fourth Piano Concerto, with which conductor Eduard Zilberkant made such an exhilarating impression in the performance I wrote about in last week's preview in this year's New York Concert Artists "Evenings of Piano Concerti" series.

Readers who were here for the April 2011 post (and its pair of previews) Who says a piano concerto has to be all this way or that way? Not Camille Saint-Saëns" will recall hearing Emil Gilels play the wonderfully ruminating piano solo that opens Saint-Saëns's Second Piano Concerto, which I presented first as a "mystery piano solo" via an audio clip that stopped short of the orchestral entrance I left in in the above version.

In last year's Saint-Saëns piano concerto post I tried to make the point that the composer had no concern for concerto orthodoxy in deciding what kinds of music to put together for this particular concerto. Now we can extend the principle to his five piano concertos. One thing they don't do is repeat themselves. Here, for starters, is the opening of No. 4. Note that these are both minor-key movements, but they sure don't resemble each other much, do they? (And I've purposely chosen a performance of the opening movement of the Fourth Concerto that's decidedly on the broad and weighty side.)

SAINT-SAËNS: Piano Concerto No. 4 in C minor, Op. 44:
Opening

Pascal Rogé, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Charles Dutoit, cond. Decca, recorded July 1979


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