Subscription Concerts 2022-2023Program C
No. 1984 Subscription (Program C)

Born in Paris, Saint-Saëns was an uncommon musical genius wearing several hats as a pianist, organist, composer, conductor and critic. Furthermore, the superhuman was well versed in astronomy, languages, mathematics, archaeology and so on. This natural curiosity also let him
frequently depart for distant places around the world. His favorite destination was Algeria, then a French colony, and he sometimes went a little way further to Egypt.
Saint-Saëns' fifth and last piano concerto was composed in 1896 while he was staying in Luxor, Egypt. It was premiered the same year by the sixty-one-year-old composer as the soloist during the successful concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his pianist debut there. The work is thus a witness to the stunning virtuosity and stamina this phenomenal pianist maintained at the time, yet the first sonata movement commences reservedly with the unadorned, chorale-style first theme on the piano. The solo part soon begins to hum with pianistic runs before the tenser D-minor second theme appears. The concerto's byname, not by Saint-Saëns himself though, came from orientalism — in its broadest sense — prevailing the second movement. From its beginning, our composertraveler makes lavish use of exotic intervals to create a Spanish and Middle-eastern mood. The dulcet air crooned during the middle section is reminiscent of boatmen singing a Nubian love song Saint-Saëns heard while sailing the Nile. Then some habitants of this famous river, frogs and crickets, are musically depicted. Before the main section returns, we even hear a sound evocative of Javanese gamelan. Away from the exoticism, the finale, a quasi-acrobatic
toccata teemed with pianistic feats, closes the work at the height of its feverishness.
[Kumiko Nishi]

19th-century France fussed over the opera and ballet, while long minimizing the nonprogrammatic symphony. A turning point was the 1871 defeat at the Franco-German War: the rising nationalism pushed domestic composers to create French masterpieces comparable to German symphonic achievements, Saint-Saëns' Symphony with Organ (premiered in 1886) being in the vanguard. A most representative of this tide is Franck's Symphony in D minor (premiered in 1889) ironically, as he was from Belgium — born in Liège to a German/Walloon couple to be active in Paris later —, and also the contemporary French music world held him in slight esteem. The mainstream condemned the Symphony in D minor at the first performance in Paris, although his fervent partisans called "Franckists" praised it.
Franck's style is indeed readily differentiated from the typical French composers'. On the model of Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner, Franck acquired a sort of Austro-Germanic logic and rigor to gain his own style. Moreover, his expertise as a church organist — namely as an improviser — is definitely connected with his thick, massive orchestral sound and constant harmonic change. All of these qualities are integrated in the Symphony in D minor written in his closing years.
The work takes a cyclic form, Franck's hallmark: at the beginning of the first sonata movement, low strings present a questioning cyclic motif which would recur throughout the entire piece to unify it. This motif might imply Beethoven's last string quartet, more concretely its motif accompanied by the phrase "Muss es sein (Must it be) ?" The middle movement inventively combines a traditional slow movement (section A) and scherzo (B) in A–B–A&B form. Its opening melancholic tune by English horn contains the cyclic motif, and this tune reappears as the second theme of the finale which recalls the previous movements' main themes "as in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony" (according to Franck). Interestingly enough, Guy Ropartz, Franck's pupil, named the finale's songful first theme given by cellos and bassoon the "theme of rejoicing."
[Kumiko Nishi]