Saint-Saëns
Violin Concerto No. 3
A precocious composer from the age of four, Camille Saint-Saëns had a
long and fruitful career as a composer in nearly all genres of music: opera,
symphonies, songs, chamber music, solo piano works, and concertos. His interests
were far-ranging, including languages, mathematics, astronomy, botany, geology,
and lepidoptery (the study of butterflies). He composed with such facility that
in his later years French music critics dismissed him as simply a clever
technician, as well as old-fashioned (he famously derided Stravinsky's Rite of
Spring at its opening--with, it must be said, many others). But it cannot be
denied that he had a way with both melody and orchestration, and his works
remain popular to this day.
He wrote his Violin Concerto No. 3 in 1880 for the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de
Sarasate, for whom he had written his first violin concerto (1859) when the
violinist was only 15 years old, and later the Introduction and Rondo
capriccioso (1863). Sarasate premiered the third concerto in January, 1881, at a
Châtelet concert in Paris.
Writer George Bernard Shaw praised the first movement, Allegro non troppo,
for its "poetic atmosphere and compelling melodiousness." It begins
with anticipatory, trembling chords under an introductory melody played on the
violin's lowest string (G). It continues in alternate passionate sections full
of pyrotechnics with a contrasting, lyrical second theme, in an (A-B-A-B-A)
from. The opening melody returns for the final coda, featuring brilliant
passages for the soloist.
The second movement, Andantino quasi allegretto, is based on a Sicilian
melody that is passed between the soloist and members of the woodwinds,
including flute, oboe, and clarinet. The stately 6/8 rhythm propels the movement
at a reserved, but not leisurely, pace. The final quiet arpeggios for the
soloist rise up to stratospheric harmonics, fading away as if into the clouds.
The opening of the finale, Molto moderato e maestoso, seems almost as if we
had fallen by mistake into a closing cadenza. Direct, deliberate statements in
the violin are contrasted with flourishes by the orchestra. The solo line
transitions to the movement's key of B-minor and the tempo picks up to Allegro
non troppo. Both soloist and orchestra share equally in conveying the two
motifs, one a leaping theme with triplets and the other a rising scale. A
sweetly elegant cantabile section in G major is set in the center of this
movement like a small gem. The final section modulates into B-major, and
features a brief chorale by the brass and a fiery Presto close.
July 21, 2007
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