Piano Concerto No. 5 (Saint-Saëns)
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The Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, Op. 103, popularly known as The Egyptian, was Camille Saint-Saëns' last piano concerto. He wrote it in 1896 for the occasion of his own Jubilee Concert on May 6, which celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his début at the Salle Pleyel in 1846. The concerto is nicknamed 'The Egyptian' because Saint-Saëns composed the piece in Luxor while on one of his frequent winter vacations to Egypt. The movements are:
The concerto is a highly pictorial piece based on an amalgam of musical impressions from Saint-Saëns' world travels, which were to places as diverse as Algeria, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Brazil, the United States, and Southeast Asia. The music is among his most exotic, displaying influences from Javanese and Spanish music as well as Middle-eastern. Saint-Saëns said that the piece represented a sea voyage..
The Allegro animato alternates several times between two contrasting themes. It begins warmly, introducing a simple subject on the piano, which is imbued at each new variation with increasing energy by a brilliant and technically challenging piano part featuring runs up and down the keyboard. This dissolves into a much slower and deeply melancholy subject, recalling that of the Andante sostenuto movement of Saint-Saëns' second piano concerto. Like waves, the two lead into one another until finally the second theme gives way to a gentle coda.
The Andante, traditionally the slow and expressive movement in concerto form, begins literally with a bang; the timpani punctuates an orchestral chord following by an intensely rhythmic string part and an ascending and descending exotic run on the piano. This exciting introduction segues into the thematic exposition based on a Nubian love song that Saint-Saëns heard boatmen sing as he sailed on the Nile in a 'dahabiah' boat. Lush and exotic, this is the primary manifestation of the Egyptian sounds of the piece and probably the source of the nickname. Toward the end of the section, the piano and orchestra produce impressionistic sounds representing crickets and frogs.
The soloist begins the third Molto allegro with low rumbles suggesting the sounds of ships' propellers before exhibiting a vigorous and bustling first theme that rushes all over the piano. The piano continues in its dizzying motion as the woodwinds and strings bring in a driving new melody. The two combine and overlap, creating an active tension that Saint-Saëns uses to great dramatic effect, concluding the movement with a triumphant flourish. He later adapted these themes in 1899 for the Toccata that closes with Opus 111 series of études.
Saint-Saëns himself was the soloist at the première, which was a popular and critical success.
