Saint Saens Piano Trio in F No.

Saint Saens was 28 when he wrote this Piano Trio. It was in 1863, where all the French audience were
ONLY interested in opera but not anything else. But Saint saens has a huge passion for chamber music, it
wasn’t easy for him since he could find no tradition to inspire him and chamber music was a genre which
was considered NOT important at all.

It is somehow ironic, that his first really successful work, and the earliest that is still played today, is his
Piano Trio.

This Piano Trio is believed to be inspired by a holiday in the Pyrenees (a range of mountains that forms
the natural border between France and Spain)

There is this fresh and ‘open-air’ character to the theme of the 1st movt. Its charming and delightful.
Saint saens deliberately added some confusion between the two-time and three-time, like a child who
can’t quite decide whether to go left or right or to skip or run. The composer himself as a pianist also
liked to challenge all the pianists out there by adding some brilliant and flamboyant passages.

Second movt is a very solemn yet very mysterious. It has a very short little cadenza by the cello and the
piano towards the end of the movement.

The third movt Scherzo has 2 distinctive ideas: first, the cheeky strings pizzicato and piano off-beat,
second the peasants dance with an off-beat accent. It’s almost like a rhythmic mental game for us during
our rehearsals.

The last movt might seems to be the least melodically distinctive movement at the beginning, with the
violin and cello going up and down, but saint saens is playing with our expectation.. there actually is a
half-hidden melody in the piano part. You can try to test your ears later on. The movement finally closes
with a steady and light-hearted ending.

So here it is kiann chow, eric ….