Havanaise for violin and orchestra, Op.83

The most popular form of Spanish music in Paris towards the end of the nineteenth century was the habanera. After Bizet had presented such an irresistible example of the dance in Carmen in 1875, every composer had to have a habanera – or “havanaise” as he might have called it in French – in his repertoire. Chabrier, a lover all things Spanish, composed his Habanera in 1895, Ravel wrote his 1898, and both he and Debussy continued at least to allude to the dance well into the present century – until, that is, it was replaced in popular favour by the closely related but sexier tango from Argentina.

Saint-Saëns wrote his Havanaise in 1887 for his violinist friend Raphael Diaz Albertini. As a musician of Cuban origins, like the dance itself, Albertini would no doubt have appreciated the authentic quality of the habanera melody at the beginning of the piece, with its characteristically seductive rhythmic pattern repeated in nearly every bar over a similarly persistent but subtly different rhythm in the bass. As a virtuoso instrumentalist, he would also have appreciated the two episodes in quicker tempo that so brilliantly offset the languorous habanera material around them. Never short of ideas, Saint-Saëns introduces a new habanera tune after the first of the quicker episodes and ingeniously develops it before launching the violin on a flight of double-stopped figuration into the second bravura experience. A nostalgic coda quietly echoes the accompaniment figure on timpani while the violin prepares to disappear into the thin air at the very top of its range.

Gerald Larner©