Saint-Saëns, Camille

Saint-Saëns, Camille – Symphonie n° 2 en la mineur op. 55

(b. Paris, 9 October 1835 – d. Algiers, 16 December 1921)

Allegro marcato – Allegro appassionato p.1
Adagio p.34
Scherzo: Presto. p.40
Finale: Prestissimo. p.57

Preface
One of the most important French composers of the romantic age, Camille Saint-Saens, was also one of the greatest child prodigies and intellects in all of music history. He began piano lessons before the age of three and shortly thereafter started composing, having already learned to read and write. He was reading and analyzing full orchestral scores at age 5, and performed his first public recital at that age, accompanying a Beethoven violin sonata. At age ten, he gave a concert that included Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, a Mozart concerto, along with works of Bach, Handel, and Hummel. For his encore, the young prodigy offered to play any of the 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas from memory. A few years later he studied organ and composition at the Paris Conservatoire. His first symphony was performed in December 1853. He displayed the same genius and lifelong eclectic intellectual curiosity in learning languages, advanced mathematics, archeology, botany, acoustics, history, philosophy, literature, geology and astronomy. Having been born and coming to maturity in a Paris, which at the time included literary and musical elites such as Victor Hugo, Ivan Turgenev, Gustav Flaubert, George Sand, Gioachino Rossini, Georges Bizet, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Charles Gounod, Jacques Offenbach, Cesar Franck, and Henri Vieuxtemps, it was difficult for Saint-Saens to stand out as a composer. By the mid 1860s he had however established himself as a first-class pianist and organist but had not made his mark as a composer. In 1868, to great critical and public acclaim, he premiered (playing the solo part) his Second Piano Concerto. This performance and the premiere of other works subsequently contributed to his becoming an important person in the musical life of not only Paris but also the rest of France and eventually abroad. …

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