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Camille Saint-Saëns wrote his Second Piano Concerto in barely three weeks at the request of Anton Rubinstein. However, the premiere, with Saint-Saëns himself playing the piano part, turned into a complete disaster because he had not had enough time to rehearse the concerto alongside composing it. Today, this work is by far the most famous of the five piano concertos that Saint-Saëns composed.
Although the famous ‘Viennese Waltz’ only came into being at the beginning of the 19th century, Richard Strauss used a lot of waltz music in the second and third acts of Der Rosenkavalier. Critics were highly dissatisfied with this anachronism, but the audience enjoyed Strauss’ music so much that the orchestral highlights were soon compiled into an enchanting suite.