Piano Concerto No.4 in C minor, Op.44

Having only recently been horrified by his Danse macabre and having long hated his Third Piano Concerto, the Parisian public must have been more than a little apprehensive about what they would hear when Saint-Saëns gave the first performance of his Piano Concerto No.4 in C minor at the Concerts Colonne in October 1875. But no concerto begins less sensationally. Without so much as a preliminary flourish from either the piano or the orchestra, the first violins enter quietly and almost hesitantly with a theme of modestly classical character and the piano just as quietly repeats it in slightly varied rhythms and harmonies. What is going on here?

In fact, as anyone who recognised the kinship between the theme of this Allegro moderato and that of the last movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C minor might already have guessed, a theme and variations is going on here. However, although the variations proceed in a classically regular cycle of eight-bar phrases, shared evenly at first between soloist and orchestra, the piano figuration becomes ever more extravagant, more Lisztian than Mozartian, and the harmonies more chromatic.

Just at the point where the variation structure seems to be breaking down, activity ceases and the tempo changes to Andante for what is, in effect, a slow movement in A flat major. Beginning with one of those prophetic passages one sometimes finds in Saint-Saëns, in spite of his alleged conservatism, an atmospheric episode that could almost have been written by Rachmaninov precedes the entry of the main theme on woodwind. If this chorale-like melody is not simple enough to grasp on first hearing, it should certainly be familiar by the end of a movement designed specifically - though by no means unpoetically and not without the introduction of a seductive secondary theme on the piano - to fix it firmly in the memory.

The Allegro vivace in C minor, which follows the Andante after a short pause while the strings remove their mutes, is the scherzo section of the work. Brilliantly written and neatly constructed in three parts, with a middle section that gallops away on one note, the scherzo is not so self-contained as to exclude frequent references back to the theme of the opening Allegro moderato. Another Andante intervenes, mainly to recall the secondary theme of the previous Andante but also to issue a reminder, just once, of the chorale melody from that same section. Then, on a change of tempo to Allegro and after a brief fanfare on horns and trumpets, the peroration begins. Set proudly in C major, it is based, inevitably, on the chorale theme, which is repeated in a variety of orchestral and piano colours, alternated with some not very interesting subsidiary material, and elevated as far as it will go before a sparkling coda finishes it off.

The verdict of the apprehensive Parisian public was that, while they didn’t like it quite as much as the Second Piano Concerto in G minor, the Concerto in C minor was a very acceptable if eccentric addition to the repertoire.

Gerald Larner©