Saint-Saëns Piano quintet in a minor op 14

 Day 29

Saint-Saëns Piano quintet in a minor op 14

Groups instrumental de Paris

Saint-Saëns is a composer I have come to admire more and more in recent years. I suppose like most people my introduction to his music was The Carnival of the Animals, but as a teenager I didn't have the range of musical knowledge to appreciate the subtleties of its various allusions to other composers' works. I remember playing in the orchestra as a student for a performance of the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, which I enjoyed. I've conducted and played in several performances of the Organ Symphony and over the years have played one or two other works,

It was the Stephen Hough set of the piano concertos which set me off on my exploration of Saint-Saëns and I am really enjoying getting to know more of his vast catalogue of works. Saint-Saëns wrote a fair amount of chamber music. The septet with trumpet is great fun and there is some really attractive music in the two string quartets.  The piano quartet in b flat (actually the second but the first was only published relatively recently) is gorgeous.

This piano quartet is an early work dating from 1855 when the composer was 20. I enjoyed much of it but it is not in the same league as the other works I have mentioned.  There are some very attractive passages but I didn't think that it held together all that well. The writing for the strings is quite often orchestral in style , with lots of tremolos and passages in octaves for the two violins which sometimes go unnecessarily in to the stratosphere. The middle movements came off best - with some really beautiful lyrical passages in the slow movement and a real sense of excitement and daring in the scherzo.  The finale is a real oddity. It starts with a slow solemn fugue in the strings: my assumption (and I didn't turn the page in the score to find out what happened next) was that the composer would suddenly change the mood and give us one of his delightful light-hearted finales, as if to say 'fooled you'. But that didn't happen, The fugue subject turned into the main theme of the movement but in a way which was neither one thing nor the other - not academic but not fun.  Really odd.

The recording I have (from the big collection of Saint-Saëns' music on Warner) is quite old and the sound is quite wiry in places. Perhaps a better recording might have created a more positive impression.

So perhaps this piece didn't quite meet my expectations - but there is still plenty more Saint-Saëns to go at. I am currently exploring the operas - there is some absolutely gorgeous music there as well as drama and pathos. I haven't got to them all yet, so there is a fair chance that one of them will feature in this series later in the year. The only one of his operas I have seen is Samson and Delilah, but that was mainly memorable for a catastrophic failure in the scenery where Samson brought down the walls of the temple an act too early!