This was the last concerto that Saint-Saens wrote for his own instrument, the piano. Its subtitle has a dual meaning. Firstly, it was composed quickly in Luxor and Cairo in early 1896; and secondly, the composer incorporated elements of Egyptian and oriental music within it. He even wrote later that 'The second movement is a kind of journey to the Orient, which in the episode in F-sharp even reaches the Far East. The passage in G is a Nubian love song that I heard sung by boatmen on the Nile'. |
