Interpretative aspect of C. Saint‑Saëns’s piano music
Authors: Klendiy O.M. 
Published: August 2020

Background, the objective of the research. From the perspective of interpretative discourse, C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s heritage widens the contemporary views of his performance career and explains the nature of his pianoforte mentality. Moreover, an interpretative approach is becoming an important part of its investigation methodology, which makes it possible to state the aim of the paper, which is to determine the priorities of C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns as being an outstanding virtuoso performer of his historical era (what is necessary to understand his artistic mentality). According to the aim of the paper, the following practical tasks have been solved: 1) lay down the requirements for a pianist when performing C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s pianoforte cycles; 2) determine the artist’s most performed solo pianoforte works nowadays (namely the cycles). The methodological basis of the research is a comprehensive approach based on the unity of historical biographical, genre-style and performance research methods that emphasize the importance of the piano work of a unique French artist for modern generations of performers. The results of the research. The analysis of the performances of young C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns has become obvious that at the beginning of his performance career, he was far from the traditional image of a pianist-virtuoso typical for the first half of the 19th century and has represented the model of a pianist-interpreter of classical music pieces, according to new cultural tendencies. In the middle of the 1860s C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns shifted his genre-style priorities in his concert performance and widened the geography of his audience outside France to Germany, England and Russia. The French virtuoso improved his repertoire by performing the works of contemporary composers. However, the tendency towards romantic repertoire did not prevent him from including of J.-Ph. Rameau’s and J. S. Bach’s works into his concert program. Beginning from the 1890s to the end of C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s performance career (1921), his own works made the basis of his concert programs also. Having systematized of C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s repertoire, four performance preferences have been distinguished: 1) interest in the works of Baroque composers and French national culture of pre-classical period; 2) returning to Viennese classicists as the basis of a pianist’s concert repertoire in the new historical era; 3) having romanticists’ works serving as the example of modern performer’s repertoire in the second half of the 19th century; 4) producing his own music pieces and transcriptions. Based on summarizing the repertoire preferences, in terms of their stylistics and the increase in the significance of the historical interpretation of other composers’ works, which can be traced in C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s statements and recommendations, it has been concluded that at the beginning of the 20th century his performance style corresponded to the one typical for new post-romantic performers – “interpreters-generalists” (according to O. Kandynskyi-Rybnikov, 1991). The comparison of C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s solo concert programs of different years and the genre and style orientation of the piano compositions created by him in the corresponding periods shows a noticeable interconnection of two major areas of his creative activity – concert and composing. In his early period, he interpreted, as a pianist, mainly the classical music pieces (especially Beethoven’s). And his own Op. 3, Bagatelli, was created under the influence of the Viennese classicism music. In his mature period (starting from the middle of the 1860s), which was connected with C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s concert tours outside France and the enrichment of his repertoire with the works by F. List, F. Chopin, F. Mendelssohn, R. Schumann, there was a shift of the composer’s genre and style priorities: he composed the concert etudes of the Op. 52, program pieces of the Album Op. 72. Finally, in his late period (from the 1890s), except for his own music pieces, the basis of C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s concert programs consists of the works of classicists. At those times, his Suite Oр. 90, Six Etudes op. 135 for left hand and Six Fugues Op. 61 were created, which shows the author’s interest in the genre models of European Baroque. The fundamental principles of C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s pianoforte mentality has been distinguished: virtuosity and simultaneous accuracy of applying expressive means; clarity and accuracy of instrument sound together with the delicacy and flexible manner of intoning; in terms of the interpretation of historically remote composers’ pieces (pre-classical, classical and early-romantic periods), the attempts to approximate the tone to the authentic sound pattern. Taking into account the composer’s performance style and the tasks set in the score of his works, the requirements for a pianists needed for the interpretation of C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s pianoforte cycles have been laid down: high level of performance technical preparation; analytical skills, wide kit of mental sound patterns that integrates the features of various historical and style eras, from Baroque to PostRomanticizm. As for the panorama of the interpretative versions of C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s piano works, every cycle has quite rich performance history, which is proved by numerous professional recordings. Over the last decade, more and more recordings of C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns’s pianoforte cycles have been appearing, which contributes to the popularization of the pianoforte heritage of the French artist. Most of them have been created by French pianists. However, the geography of the recordings is quite wide: Italy, the USA, Switzerland, Hungary, Austria, Russia, Germany. Unfortunately, in Ukraine the piano cycles are almost unknown and are rarely performed; there are no known audio recordings of their performance by outstanding Ukrainian pianists. Conclusion. In search of a starting point in mastering the principles of interpretation of French piano culture, the study of the creative activity by C. Saint-Sa&#235;ns today has advantages over the study of other French composers of the mid XIX – early XX century, because there is a large amount of material available that reveals its artistic, in particular performing, priorities. All the above indicates the need to popularize the piano heritage of C. Saint-Saens in the modern globalized world and proves the importance of an interpretological approach to its understanding. The latter reveals the essence of the piano style of a unique artist who, in his creative evolution, has gone from classicromantic attitudes to examples of his own nео-stylistic thinking, which dominates the art of the twentieth century.