Havanaise, op. 83

Havanaise was written in 1887 for the Cuban-born violinist Rafael Díaz Albertini, who toured with Saint-Saëns and received the dedication. The story attached to it — that the swaying habanera rhythm came to the composer while he watched a fire flicker in a hotel grate at Brest during that tour — has been repeated since the nineteenth century. The piece alternates that languid rocking figure with brilliant episodes, and its Spanish colouring is of a piece with the vogue that produced Lalo's Symphonie espagnole and Bizet's Carmen in the same decades.