Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 09/30/2015, uploaded on 05/19/2016

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Like his compatriots Bizet and Lalo, Camille Saint-Saëns held a certain fascination for Spanish music. Standing alongside such splendid evocations of the style as Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole or the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen is Saint-Saëns’s masterful showpiece Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso. Composed in 1863, Saint-Saëns composed the piece for the violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, for whom he wrote his First Violin Concerto four years earlier and would later compose his Concerto in B minor in 1880. Following the works premiere and later publication, De Sarasate was instrumental in establishing the work’s popularity and it has since remained a staple of the repertoire. Indeed, both Bizet and Debussy were impelled to craft their own arrangements of the work—the former reducing the orchestra to a piano accompaniment and the latter transforming the work for two pianos.

As indicated by the title, the work opens with a slow introduction—a languid Andante malinconico in A minor. Atop a simple chordal accompaniment from the orchestra, the violin sounds the opening melancholy tune from its lush middle register. Over the course of the introduction, the melody becomes more enlivened, as if awakening from its slumber and leads, through a sort of quasi-cadenza, into the Rondo proper. Adopting the lilting rhythms of a compound meter, the Rondo establishes a somewhat quicker place (Allegro ma non troppo), but not without abandoning the relaxed feel of the introduction, and the violin gives forth the Rondo’s sprightly main theme. This is later contrasted by a lyrical and somber second theme in the relative major, which features a compelling juxtaposition of compound and duple meters (2/4 meter in the soloists against the 6/8 of the orchestra). The themes and motives of the work are developed through the course of the Rondo amidst brilliant figurations and embellishments from the soloist. An energetic coda, in A major and quickening to Più Allegro, built around fast-paced arpeggios and scales creates an exciting and invigorating close for one of Saint-Saëns’s most famous compositions.      Joseph DuBose

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Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28    Camille Saint-Saëns

Dedicated to the great Spanish violinist, Sarasate, Saint-Saëns wrote this work in 1863 with a reflective opening, almost like an operatic recitative and a dazzling aria full of fireworks, tailor-made to show off Sarasate’s famed technique. It immediately became standard virtuoso fare. Despite their disagreements, Debussy arranged the piece for two pianos in the earlier years of his career.

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.