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Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 2 / Stembolskaya
Piano Classics

Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 2 / Stembolskaya

$20.99

Details

Composer
Camille Saint-Saëns
Artist
Maria Stembolskaya
Format
CD
Label
Piano Classics
Released
Feb 11, 2022
Catalog #
PCL10247
UPC
5029365102476

About

In the centenary of his death in 1921, Camille Saint-Saëns is still patronized in some quarters as a prodigiously fluent musician of second-rate gifts. Yet his elders, his contemporaries and his students all esteemed him as an innovator as well as a gifted melodist and supremely disciplined technician in the craft as well as the art of composing. For Berlioz, the only problem with the child prodigy Saint-Saëns was that he knew too much. Ravel declared that he learnt everything he knew about orchestration from scores such as the Second Piano Concerto. Out of the composer’s five piano concertos, the Second has long established itself as the most popular thanks to a unique and winning stylistic progression neatly summed up ‘from Bach to Offenbach’, opening with a monumental cadenza and orchestral response in the manner of a Bachian prelude for organ, and winding up with an exhilarating tarantella. Three years after its composition in 1868, a version for solo piano was made by none other than Georges Bizet, Saint-Saëns’s short-lived contemporary. The arrangement was enthusiastically taken up by the composer, and it sheds valuable light on the essentially pianistic nature of his inspiration. This rarely encountered but fascinating transcription is complemented by ‘Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix’, the love-confession sung by Delila in the grand Biblical epic staging the downfall of Samson, in a solo piano version made by the Russian musicologist Boris Borodin. Another of the composer’s greatest admirers was Tchaikovsky, and Maria Stembolskaya adds a pair of piano fantasies inspired by the best-known of his stage works, Eugene Onegin: a free transcription of the third-act Polonaise made by Liszt, and a spectacular paraphrase of the opera’s main themes by one of his most talented students, Paul Pabst.

Tracklist 6 tracks

  1. 1 I. Andante sostenuto 11:08
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Andante sostenuto
    Duration
    11:08
    Composer
    Camille Saint-Saëns
    Performer
    Maria Stembolskaya
  2. 2 II. Allegro scherzando 05:35
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Allegro scherzando
    Duration
    05:35
    Composer
    Camille Saint-Saëns
    Performer
    Maria Stembolskaya
  3. 3 III. Presto 06:19
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Presto
    Duration
    06:19
    Composer
    Camille Saint-Saëns
    Performer
    Maria Stembolskaya
  4. 4 Samson et Dalila, Op. 47, Act II: Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta vox (arr. B. Borodin for piano) 07:27
    Track
    4
    Title
    Samson et Dalila, Op. 47, Act II: Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta vox (arr. B. Borodin for piano)
    Duration
    07:27
    Composer
    Camille Saint-Saëns
    Performer
    Maria Stembolskaya
  5. 5 Tchaikovsky - Eugen Onegin: Polonaise, S429/R262 06:19
    Track
    5
    Title
    Tchaikovsky - Eugen Onegin: Polonaise, S429/R262
    Duration
    06:19
    Composer
    Franz Liszt
    Performer
    Maria Stembolskaya
  6. 6 Paraphrase of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Op. 81 12:47
    Track
    6
    Title
    Paraphrase of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Op. 81
    Duration
    12:47
    Composer
    Paul Pabst
    Performer
    Maria Stembolskaya