mikrokosmos:

Saint-Saëns – Septet in Eb Major, op. 65 (1880)

For piano, trumpet, string quartet, and bass. This is an unusual combination of instruments, because Saint-Saëns wrote it for his friend Émile Lemoine. He and Lemoine were part of a small chamber music society, which Saint-Saëns founded, and by default they had a piano and string instruments ready. Lemoine urged Saint-Saëns to write something for the ensemble that could include a trumpet part. As a Christmas gift, he wrote the first movement, and pleased with the results, promised to write more movements for a complete work. What resulted was this neoclassical piece, using baroque dance forms, and it has a lighthearted and charming feel to it while also being musically complex and sophisticated. We rush into a flurry of notes in unison, before the trumpet comes in with with a pronouncement. The instruments color around each other, the piano especially has virtuosic and glittering moments. A few dramatic chords carry us into a grand intro to a short fugato on a simple stately theme. It doesn’t follow strict fugue writing expectations, instead it’s like a mix of fantasia and fugue. Then we get a slower section that focuses on a mis-step rhythm. More piano flourishes bring us back to the fugue theme. It ends with a grand coda, the piano giving extra color with fast shimmering scales. The menuet has a quasi-regal melody, making me think of palace gardens. Again, “neo-classical”, that is a sense of the “old” out of an original context. The B section is somewhat ponderous. Later the same textures are used for a more uplifting trio, noble and dignified. The intermezzo is more solemn, bringing back the ‘mis-step’ rhythm of the first movement. It grows into a louder cry, then takes a step back. We repeat, and the end includes a trumpet passage that stands in front of the rest. The last movement is a gavotte and finale. The gavotte opens with a fun delicate melody in the piano as the strings play staccato chords. Later the repeat is crazy. The piano is given hectic semiquavers in its melody, jittering around, still staying quiet but it’s like a caffeine rush. After the repeat, the lower strings and piano introduce another fugato, on a carefree melody that becomes more rousing as the voices layer over each other. They work together to make a grand ending, that includes some “silly” scales with unexpected accents. An underrated masterpiece.

Movements:

1. Préambule

2. Menuet

3. Intermède

4. Gavotte et Final