Description

This was the last concerto that Saint-Saëns wrote for his own instrument, the piano. Its subtitle has a dual meaning. Firstly, it was composed quickly in Luxor and Cairo in early 1896; and secondly, the composer incorporated elements of Egyptian and oriental music within it. He even wrote later that “The second movement is a kind of journey to the Orient, which in the episode in F-sharp even reaches the Far East. The passage in G is a Nubian love song that I heard sung by boatmen on the Nile”.
(Französisches Original:
«La seconde partie est une façon de voyage en Orient qui va même, dans l’épisode en fa dièse, jusqu’en Extrême-Orient. Le passage en sol est un chant d’amour nubien que j’ai entendu chanter par les bateliers sur le Nil.»)