Despite several recordings, Camille Saint-Saëns’s Septet in E flat major op. 65 for piano, trumpet and string quintet of 1880/1881 remains something of a chamber music rarity because of its unusual scoring – rather like the E flat major Septet op. 20 by Beethoven. But is it “chamber music” at all? Right from its premiere by the dedicatee Émile Lemoine and his chamber music society “La Trompette”, the neoclassical work was presented on 11 February 1881 with double string quartet, and in the following years it was also frequently performed by a large group of strings – entirely in line with the composer’s conception, as Lemoine recalled: “But it works (in the author’s opinion) better if the quartet is doubled. It is very beautiful with [string] orchestra, I have also heard it thus in the Colonne concerts.” And in 1821, the year of his death, Saint-Saëns wrote (to an unknown addressee): “As they have an orchestra in Forges-les-Eaux, it would have been much better to perform my Septet with all the strings; in a large hall the effect would have been better.” This tradition of performing the work as a “double concerto” for trumpet, piano and string orchestra has unfortunately been completely lost in the ensuing 100 years – which seems all the more surprising as there is a famous and often-performed work for exactly the same scoring: the Concerto no. 1 in C minor op. 35 for piano, trumpet and string orchestra op. 35 (1933) by Dmitri Shostakovich!

Perhaps it is because there has been no adequate edition of the Saint-Saëns Septet previously – something which has now changed:  The edition of the score and parts – edited by the Saint-Saëns scholar Sabina Teller Ratner as a separate edition in the Œuvres instrumentales complètes – now offers a work which all trumpeters, pianists and conductors can pair with the Shostakovich concerto. We are excited to see who will be the first to take up this delightful idea and implement it.

Michael Stegemann
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson – from [t]akte 1/2025)