Camille Saint-Saens could write concertos like nobody’s business. His piano concertos still remain in the repertory, and his Second Piano Concerto is a perennial. The scherzo from that concerto was a favorite of George Gershwin, who labeled it “a Parisian in Paris”. The finale is a marvelous, wild tarantella. This is Arthur Rubinstein’s video performance with Andre Previn at the podium taped in the Seventies. Rubinstein was 88 and almost blind, but he hadn’t lost it.
Saint-Saens: Piano Concerto #2 in G minor, second and third movements