Piano Concerto no. 2 in G minor, op. 22

The Second Piano Concerto was written in seventeen days in the spring of 1868, to fill an engagement Anton Rubinstein had arranged at short notice so that he could try his hand at conducting in Paris. Saint-Saëns played the premiere at the Salle Pleyel on 13 May and, having had no time to practise, played the first movement badly. The opening is a solo cadenza in the manner of a Bach organ fantasia; the finale is a tarantella. Sigismond Stojowski's summary has stuck to the piece ever since: it begins with Bach and ends with Offenbach.