Camille Saint-Saëns - Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 29 (1869) {Pascal Rogé}

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (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).

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Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 29 (1869)
Dedication: Elie Miriam Delaborde (1839-1913)

1. Moderato assai (0:00)
2. Andante (14:33)
3. Allegro non troppo (22:34)

Pascal Rogé, piano and the London Philharmonic conducted by Charles Dutoit

Description by John Palmer [-]
Published in 1875 in Paris, Saint-Saëns' Piano Concerto in E flat Major, Op. 29, is dedicated to pianist Elie-Myriam Delaborde. Although all five of Saint-Saëns' concertos, to some extent, follow Viennese models, the Third is arguably the most traditional in its formal procedures. (There were few French models of the piano concerto available at the time.) Other aspects of the piece, however, make it innovative, and the keyboard writing betrays Saint-Saëns' assimilation of Liszt's style.

Shortly after he had completed the Third Concerto, Saint-Saëns performed the piece in concert in Leipzig Gewandhaus, where it was poorly received. Strange as it may seem today, reviewers of the concert counted Saint-Saëns among the "progressive" composers of the time -- Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner -- whom they despised. One reviewer resented the concerto's "futuristic aftertaste," calling the piece "trite." In Paris, the piece faired no better, one critic calling it "comparable to everything incoherent and tormented in Liszt's late manner." Comments such as these are more likely a response to Saint-Saëns' publicly expressed approval of Liszt and Wagner than an evaluation of the Third Piano Concerto. Ten years would pass before the piece was well received, after which it disappeared from the repertoire, overshadowed by the popular Second Concerto.