Camille Saint-Saëns, 1835-1921
Piano Trio No. 1 in F major, Op. 18, 1864
Around the turn of the 20th century, Camille Saint-Saëns was widely regarded by the English-speaking world as France's greatest living composer. Throughout the later 19th century, he was not inaccurately labeled the French Mozart, the French Mendelssohn and even the French Beethoven. Saint-Saëns was a remarkable child prodigy demonstrating immense gifts as a pianist, composer and star pupil in a variety of academic subjects. His musical mind was nurtured on the Viennese classics (he could play all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas from memory at the age of 10), and he would eventually compose prodigiously and masterfully in all the classic musical genres for church, stage, orchestra, chamber ensemble, solo piano and organ. Upon hearing him improvise, Liszt pronounced Saint-Saëns the greatest organist of all time. Unlike most of his French musical contemporaries, the young Saint-Saëns championed the new music of Schumann, Wagner and Liszt and he was equally unusual in frequently composing chamber music, something most others regarded as a particularly Germanic specialty. Saint-Saëns became a significant, internationally famous composer almost as a French neo-classicist commonly associated with two of his strongest mid-century influences: Mendelssohn and Schumann. Nonetheless, with the motto "Ars gallica", Saint-Saëns vigorously promoted the music of new French composers, particularly that of his favorite student Gabriel Fauré. But in time, with the rise of such composers as Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc, Saint-Saëns faded into the role of the "old school" conservative, a relic in the face of the avant-garde.
Saint-Saëns left a rich trove of wonderful music in all traditional genres and it is surprising that his chamber music especially is not performed more frequently. His duo sonatas, piano trios, piano quartets and string quartets are all masterful pieces beginning with the sparkling Piano Trio No. 1 in F major, Op. 18, of 1864, written just before Saint-Saëns turned 30. While it strongly evokes the influences of Schumann, Mendelssohn and, indeed, Beethoven, it is also undeniably French. Perhaps more pleasurable than profound (as some have put it) the trio has spacious, transparent textures, formal elegance, rhythmic vitality and color with ingenious development of simple but pliable musical materials. The clarity, the invention, and the perfectly classical musicality of it all vividly support the true notion of a French Mozart.
The first movement, in sonata form, is a rather dazzling showpiece of thematic minimalism. The first theme is a lively dotted-rhythm making a two-part assent up the major scale. The second, a shape that climbs a little and falls a lot, a kind of spinning descent. Propelled in a triple-meter dance, these two small motives expand, invert, cross-pollinate and blend in counterpoint, passing among the three instruments in an intricate weave. The rich diversity blossoming from such humorously basic means is pure wit. The exposition has no repeat: when it comes around again, a clear extended development begins while the recapitulation swaps the roles and inverts the textures. A coda decorates the design. Throughout the whole trio there is a formal clarity that is enlivened by vivacious spontaneity.
The second, slow movement is an atmospheric rondo whose main refrain is a poised, double-dotted French processional, delicate, deliberate and slightly melancholy in a minor key. Between the refrains that reappear with fresh color and ambiance as the scoring changes, Saint-Saëns turns to the major mode with song-like lyricism and poignancy. The seams are subtle and finely blended as the distinctive dotted-rhythm stitches together otherwise contrasting musical sections.
The brief scherzo is nimble, pointillistic, occasionally deconstructed on one hand, and sweeping into grandeur on the other. Bright, virtuosic and humorous, this is Saint-Saëns the remarkable and uncanny French Beethoven.
The finale to this delicious trio reprises the simple means, sunny disposition and lively, flowing momentum of the first movement. It appears to be a sonata but the ever-dynamic development only increases towards the end in a flourish of rhapsodic fantasia. The essential theme is almost a nursery rhyme of basic tunefulness but split into two-note fragments sung in a call-and-response dialog between the strings. A loud chord and a muscular motive violently interrupt and the music protests in dramatic contrapuntal skeins. Schumann strongly comes to mind throughout but also something quite more Gallic and forward looking, a sensibility suggesting Ravel. Indeed, when Ravel wrote his piano trio masterpiece almost exactly 50 years later, he apparently turned to this trio and admired the finely crafted music of Camille Saint-Saëns.
During the third quarter of the 19 century, when the French only seemed interested in opera, 
