A pianist’s perpective
Stephen Hough
Saint-saëns is one of the most pleasurable composers to play. He wrote beautifully for the keyboard, but also wrote difficult stuff so that he could show off – all of his concertos were to an extent written as display pieces. He recorded a few cylinders in the first decade of the 20th century, from which you can tell that, even as an old man, his playing was incredible – full of dexterity, but also with great elegance and beautiful phrasing. There’s also a film of him playing which shows how everything at the keyboard was quite effortless for him.
The technical challenges he poses remain pretty much the same from the First Concerto to the Fifth. Scales and arpeggios, which are the bread and butter of every pianist, are there from the beginning to the end, but often they are in thirds, or they are awkward or incredibly fast. There are many such things in the Second Concerto, for instance, including scales for which your fingers have to be well lubricated!
As a composer, he managed to be both old school and forward-looking. On the one hand he was a Classicist who wrote in sonata form, variations and so on which link back to Mozart; but then he was also very creative harmonically – in the second movement of the Fifth Concerto, for instance, you get those weird effects that come from his world at the organ. I’ve played that piece dozens of times, and every time someone in the orchestra will come to me at the end of a rehearsal and say, ‘What do you do to create those strange overtones?’ In fact it’s a simple effect and very easy to play.
Of the five, I enjoy playing the Fifth the most – its such a surprise with its exoticism, and then you have that lovely ragtime last movement with the great tune. However, in some ways the greatest of them is the Fourth. There’s something very serious about it, and it has this incredible journey from C minor to C major – and the last movement is so full of joy. But then I also love the Third, the Second and the First! Stephen Hough has recorded all five Saintsaëns piano concertos with the CBSO and Sakari Oramo (Hyperion CDA67331-2)