This was the last concerto that Saint-Saëns 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”.
G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French
