A virtuoso pianist
Trained in the classical school of French piano playing, Saint-Saëns remained all his life a champion of ‘jeu perlé’, the style of playing achieved by moderate usage of the loud pedal and extremely detailed articulation in the fingers. It may seem surprising that he wrote only thirty-four works for his instrument, none of them with any ambitions to be his musical testament. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that his five piano concertos have never left the standard repertory (the Second and Fifth in particular), despite the competition of Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff in this domain. The piano was more in the nature of a personal laboratory for Saint-Saëns. It acted as the vehicle for his technical experiments (he left three books each containing six études) and was also the recipient of the artist’s passions: the return to the past (Six Fugues, Suite in F major), trips to exotic lands (Africa, the ‘Egyptian’ Concerto, Souvenir d’Ismaïlia, Les Cloches de Las Palmas), scientific analysis by means of transcription (the Liszt Sonata and Chopin’s B minor Sonata arranged for two pianos, Paraphrase sur La Mort de Thaïs de Massenet, and diverse adaptations of Beethoven, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Reber, Gounod, Berlioz etc.). Finally, the instrument was also a means of disseminating knowledge: Saint-Saëns the pianist not only championed his own works (which he arranged himself for piano four hands or two pianos in order to facilitate their diffusion), but also actively promoted Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart and the younger generation of French composers such as Alexis de Castillon.

An eclectic catalogue
Despite being, in Liszt’s view, ‘the world’s foremost organist’, Saint-Saëns composed even less for the organ than for the piano. His thoughts ran entirely in the direction of chamber music, orchestral music and opera. In addition to the piano concertos already mentioned (to which may be added two for cello and three for violin), we owe him five symphonies, four symphonic poems and several concert overtures. Although his catalogue of chamber music is solidly structured around sonatas, trios, quartets and quintets of every variety, it also teems with precious rarities: a Septet for trumpet, strings and piano, a Fantasy for violin and harp, a Caprice sur des airs danois et russes for flute, clarinet, oboe and piano. This variety demonstrates the extent to which Saint-Saëns was capable of diversifying his inspiration and straying from the traditional paths in order to reach an ever-wider musical public. His operatic output is still more eloquent in that respect: this generous purveyor of songs with orchestra (some thirty of them, most of which were revived by the Palazzetto Bru Zane in 2017 in a recording made in collaboration avec Alpha Classics) also wrote ambitious operas which, like those of Massenet, constantly renew their form and language. The light-hearted (Phryné, La Princesse jaune) rubs shoulders with the monumental (Henry VIII, Étienne Marcel), while the style of tragédie lyrique (Les Barbares, Déjanire) alternates with feverish Romanticism (Ascanio, Le Timbre d’argent), and even touches of Naturalism (L’Ancêtre).

Reactionary or pioneer?
Commentators still frequently treat Saint-Saëns condescendingly, without really knowing either the composer or his output: Déjanire, Frédégonde, Phryné and other major works still await resurrection. To assess Saint-Saëns’s modernity, one must not limit the angles of approach to his scores alone (which nonetheless prove that he was the first to introduce the organ into the symphony, and successfully shaped the prototype of the symphonic poem, then in its infancy). He sensed the need to create a Société Nationale de Musique in order to give a new lease of life to the composition of chamber music in France. He contributed to the first modern editions of the masters of the past, whose music it was necessary to understand, transcribe and adapt. He tried his hand at the new neo-Palestrinian style in his church music (Mass op.4) and reinvented English oratorio in the tradition of Handel (The Promised Land). For him, the twentieth century did not mark a descent into decadence: before Poulenc, he grasped the modernity and specificity of the French school of wind playing (writing solo sonatas for clarinet, bassoon and oboe, a Cavatine for trombone, and a Romance for horn) and he may be regarded as the first composer of film music (L’Assassinat du duc de Guise, 1908), a novelty that would in itself justify his place in the history of musical innovation. Saint-Saëns the pioneer – is that not the supreme paradox for a supposedly academic artist?