In 1884, soon after the premiere of his opera Henry
VIII, Saint-Saëns completed both the Allegro
appassionato, Opus 70 (not to be confused with a work
of the same title for cello, Opus 43) and the Rapsodie
d?Auvergne, Opus 73.
A seminal figure in the history of French Romantic
music, Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was also one of
the greatest keyboard prodigies of the past 200
years.
When he made his piano recital debut at the age of 10
in the Salle Pleyel, he announced to the audienc...(+)
In 1884, soon after the premiere of his opera Henry
VIII, Saint-Saëns completed both the Allegro
appassionato, Opus 70 (not to be confused with a work
of the same title for cello, Opus 43) and the Rapsodie
d?Auvergne, Opus 73.
A seminal figure in the history of French Romantic
music, Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was also one of
the greatest keyboard prodigies of the past 200
years.
When he made his piano recital debut at the age of 10
in the Salle Pleyel, he announced to the audience that
he would be pleased to perform any of Beethoven?s 32
sonatas as an encore. A good deal later, Liszt referred
to him as the greatest organist on earth. Saint-Saëns
was a prolific composer in all genres, and thus it is
not at all surprising that he created a bountiful body
of works for both organ and piano.
Not only was Camille Saint-Saëns a piano virtuoso,
eulogised by Liszt amongst many others, but he was one
of the most exciting and imaginative of composers for
the instrument. He enjoyed taking baroque and classical
forms and translating them into his own brand of
romantic language, qualities that Geoffrey Burleson
explores so adroitly in this second volume of the
complete piano music.
This "Allegro appassionato" is one of two such-named
examples of Saint-Saëns' oeuvre (the other, his op.
45, is for cello). As a virtuoso pianist who performed
regularly until just weeks before his death,
Saint-Saëns needed to refresh his solo repertoire on
occasion with such works as this. To make it maximally
useful, he wrote it so that it could be either played
with orchestra or as a solo. Its outer sections, in
C-sharp minor, based on a three-note figure made up of
a minor second and descending minor sixth, frame a
"dolce espressivo" variant in G major. This famous
Allegro Appassionato possesses brilliance and lyrical
depth.
