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.