By the time Saint-Saëns met him, Pablo de Sarasate was already an established violin virtuoso, though he was only fifteen years old. Saint-Saëns wrote:

It is a long time ago now since I first saw Pablo de Sarasate call at my house. Fresh and young as spring itself, the faint shadow of a mustache scarcely visible on his upper lip, he was already a famous virtuoso. As if it were the easiest thing in the world he had come quite simply to ask me to write a concerto for him. Flattered and charmed to the highest degree I promised I would, and I kept my word with the Concerto in A major.

The First Violin Concerto, written in 1859, was only the beginning of their long artistic relationship. In 1863 Saint-Saëns wrote the present Introduction and Rondo capriccioso for Sarasate, who for unknown reasons did not give the first performance until April 4, 1867; the composer waited until 1870 to publish the piece, but meanwhile Sarasate performed it throughout Europe and in the United States. In 1880 Saint-Saëns honored him again with the Third Violin Concerto.

These works were ideally suited to Sarasate’s style of playing—technically perfect, with an unusually sweet and pure tone and a wider vibrato than was common at the time—all of which he reportedly achieved without practicing scales or exercises. The Introduction and Rondo capriccioso is a brilliant showpiece—and perhaps the most famous of Saint-Saëns’s lighter compositions. Frequent performances were facilitated by Bizet, who made the violin and piano arrangement, and Debussy, who made a version for two pianos. Now, flute virtuoso Denis Bouriakov has transcribed the work for flute and orchestra, which makes a great and perfectly natural if extra-challenging showpiece for the flute.

Saint-Saëns gave the one-movement work a pronounced Spanish flavor in Sarasate’s honor. The rhapsodic passages of the Introduction are accompanied by pizzicato strings, suggesting a guitar. The Rondo theme with its “Spanish” syncopations alternates with contrasting episodes guaranteed to show off the soloist’s virtuosity. The work ends with a whirlwind coda that dazzles with its pyrotechnical display of scales and arpeggios.

—©Jane Vial Jaffe