Jules Massenet - Piano concerto, Marylene Dosse (piano), Westphalian Symphony Orchestra, Siegfried Landau (conductor)
1. Andante moderato – 00:00
2. Largo – 13:21
3. Airs slovaques, Allegro – 23:00

Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music.

While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known for his operas.

Like many prominent French composers of the period, Massenet became a professor at the Conservatoire. He taught composition there from 1878 until 1896, when he resigned after the death of the director, Ambroise Thomas. Among his students were Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn and Gabriel Pierné.

Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets.

Massenet was also a fluent and skilful orchestrator. Macdonald remarks that Massenet's orchestral style resembled that of Delibes, "with its graceful movement and bewitching colour". The Méditation for solo violin and orchestra, from Thaïs, is possibly the best known non-vocal piece by Massenet, and appears on many recordings.

In 1863, when Massenet won the Prix de Rome as a composer, and moved to Rome, he remarked to his sister, "I am working more at the piano. I’m studying Chopin's Études, but especially Beethoven and Bach as the true musician-pianist". That year, he began sketches for his Piano Concerto. The work was not completed until 1902, when Massenet was nearing the age of sixty. It is one of a handful of works that begins in a major key (E-flat major) and ends in minor (C minor). The concerto was performed in 1903 by Louis Diémer at the Conservatoire de Paris. After the premiere, it quickly fell into obscurity and is seldom heard today.
The first movement begins and ends in E-flat major. It showcases Massenet's operatic side and in some ways it resembles closely Beethoven's 5th piano concerto, especially since both concertos are in the same key, and both have an opening flourish in the piano.
The second movement, in B major, is a slow, deliberate promenade featuring the piano prominently throughout. There are sweeping orchestral flourishes in the middle of this movement. Eventually the music comes to a restful reprise of the theme, and the movement ends quietly in a fading murmur.
The third movement, in C minor, is subtitled "Airs Slovaques", alluding to the ersatz Slovak-like dance tune Massenet uses throughout. The brief 2/4 section towards the end evokes the virtuosic passages of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, before returning to the main theme, perpetually accelerating into tumbling passages in the piano and flamboyant outbursts in the orchestra. Massenet adds triangle and glockenspiel in this movement to augment the exotic flavor of this movement.

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