Program Notes: Xian Conducts Saint-Saëns Featuring Inon Barnatan

GABRIEL FAURÉ 
Pavane, Op. 50 
BORN: May 12, 1845, in Pamiers, Ariège, France 
DIED: November 4, 1924, in Paris, France 
COMPOSED: 1887 
WORLD PREMIERE: The orchestral version was first performed at a Concert Lamoureux under the baton of Charles Lamoureux on November 25, 1888. 

Gabriel Fauré’s delicate, free-flowing Pavane in F-sharp minor, Op. 50, is one of the most well-known orchestral delicacies from the late 19th century, marked by a sweetly melancholic tunefulness that proves nearly impossible to forget. That might be ironic, given that Fauré, a student of Saint-Saëns and a wonderful composer of finespun restrained works for small orchestral forces, considered the short Pavane a lighthearted minor work. 

The piece was composed in 1887 and scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns, with strings. A version for orchestra and chorus — created at the request of Fauré’s patron, Élisabeth Greffulhe — also exists, with a minor poem by Robert de Montesquiou, which is usually omitted. The Pavane also exists in piano reduction; interestingly, an early piano roll recording performed by Fauré himself suggests that he meant for it to be taken at a tempo slightly faster than what most conductors choose. The more spirited approach underscores the dance element, the pavane — a 16th-century court dance from which the work’s general rhythmic model is derived. The orchestral version was premiered in Paris, in 1888, under conductor Charles Lamoureux. 

The Pavane immediately ushers us into a dreamy, tranquil atmosphere that lingers on, long after the final bars are played. It fits into an A-B-A mold, with the main theme first stated by flute and picked up by oboe, and unfolding over smoothly rocking pizzicato strings. The theme, later stated by the full string section, carries an air of mournfulness — though never bleakness or desolation — that suggests a private yearning. The B section turns a bit more strident, perhaps even anguished, with aching strings and a plaintive horn. Flute, cellos, clarinet and violins allude to the main theme with subtle variations until a brief pause, underscored by trills and pizzicato pluckings from the strings, brings us back in earnest to the delightful main theme, rounding out the piece. 

Esteban Meneses © 2026 

CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS 
Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 
BORN: October 9, 1835, in Paris 
DIED: December 16, 1921, in Algiers 
WORK COMPOSED: 1868 
WORLD PREMIERE: May 13, 1868, in Paris at the Salle Pleyel, with Saint-Saëns at the keyboard and Anton Rubinstein conducting. 

Camille Saint-Saëns was one of the most prodigious and fascinating French musicians of the 19th century. During the course of a long career (he began composing at age 4 and continued to do so for the next 82 years), he produced an impressive quantity of music in every genre and distinguished himself as a pianist, organist and conductor, as well. Nor were his activities confined to music. A man of considerable intellect, Saint-Saëns wrote plays and poetry, studied archeology, astronomy and other sciences, and wrote treatises on philosophy and ancient music.   

Saint-Saëns composed his Second Piano Concerto in the spring of 1868 for a concert in Paris he presented with his close friend, the Russian pianist and conductor Anton Rubinstein. Because the performance had been hastily arranged, Saint-Saëns had to work quickly, and he completed the concerto in a mere 17 days. The composer played the solo part at the premiere, with Rubinstein conducting. “Not having had the time to practice it sufficiently,” Saint-Saëns recalled, “I played very badly, and except for the scherzo ... it did not go well.” But despite its unhappy debut, this has become the most popular of Saint-Saëns’ five concertos featuring the piano. 

In this composition, Saint-Saëns adopted an innovative approach to the concerto form. The piece begins not with the customary orchestral exposition but with a long prologue by the solo instrument. Here we find an instance of the French neo-classical impulse, and more particularly the enduring influence of J. S. Bach on musicians of different temperament and outlook down through the generations. This opening idea is very much in the style of Bach’s keyboard preludes, though touched by a Lisztian type of virtuosity. (George Bernard Shaw, who supplemented his work as a playwright by writing music criticism, compared it to the Prelude in A Minor from Book II of Bach’s The Well Tempered Clavier.) The introductory music returns, following the dramatic main body of the movement, to conclude the initial portion of the concerto.  

In place of the customary slow second movement, Saint-Saëns offers a breathless scherzo whose fleet figuration and gossamer textures recall the scherzo of Mendelssohn’s incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Here, the composer assigns the opening gesture to the timpani, an effective and original touch. The finale brings a tour de force of energy and bravura piano writing. 

Paul Schiavo © 2010, revised 2026 

CÉSAR FRANCK 
Symphony in D minor 
BORN: December 10, 1822, in Liège, Belgium 
DIED: November 8, 1890, in Paris 
WORK COMPOSED: 1888 
WORLD PREMIERE: February 17, 1889, in Paris, by the orchestra of the Société des concerts du Conservatoire, with Jules Garcin conducting. 

Throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th, numerous attempts were made to transplant the essentially Austro-German form and character of the symphony to French musical soil. One of the most successful attempts to fuse Teutonic symphonic architecture with the French penchant for color and supple melodic lines is the Symphony in D minor of César Franck. Significantly, Franck was not French but Belgian by birth and although he spent most of his career in Paris, he was more receptive than most native Frenchmen to influences from outside France. 

This symphony, Franck’s only work in the form, dates from 1888 and crowns the extraordinary creative metamorphosis of the composer’s maturity. Having caused something of a sensation with his feats as a child prodigy, Franck soon settled into a rather staid and undistinguished career as a teacher and church organist. Although his improvisations at the organ were by all accounts phenomenal (Franz Liszt reportedly left one of these muttering comparisons between Franck and Bach), his early compositions were anything but that. From about 1870, however, Franck’s music began to take on a greater boldness, clarity and depth of expression, and his fame now rests on those works — the Piano Quintet, the oratorio Les Béatitudes, the symphonic poem Psyché and especially the D-minor Symphony — completed during the last 12 years of his life. 

Much has been written about this symphony’s “cyclical construction,” in which certain themes recur in different movements. While such reappearances constitute an important aspect of the work, it is easy to attach too much significance to them. Each of the symphony’s three movements has its own thematic material and would stand as a satisfying symphonic section even without the melodic cross-references with which Franck enriches the work.  

Adhering to classical precepts of symphonic design, the composer prefaces the opening movement with an introduction in slow tempo. The dark initial motif announced by the low strings during this introductory paragraph is transformed to become the principal theme of the ensuing Allegro, the main body of the movement. 

The Allegretto that follows serves as both slow movement and scherzo. Its opening passage, a memorable English horn melody sung over an accompaniment of harp and string pizzicato, is perhaps the loveliest idea in the symphony, as well as the most famous. Franck develops this theme further in the brisk, scherzo-like central section. The finale begins and concludes with a robust subject first heard in the cellos and bassoon, but it also contains conspicuous recollections of themes from both the previous movements. 

Paul Schiavo © 2008, revised 2026