A multifaceted musician who excelled as a keyboardist, composer, conductor, teacher, and editor, Camille Saint-Saëns was also a scholar and writer of wide-ranging interests and an equally wide-ranging traveler. It was some of those travels, in north Africa in 1896, that inspired his Fifth Piano Concerto, which includes a melody in its slow movement that Saint-Saëns heard on a boat while crossing the Nile. (Hence the Concerto’s nickname: “Egyptian.”)

Come for:

A brilliant, multi-hued French program performed by two brilliant French musicians.

And more:

The LA Phil shows its virtuosic range, from delectable delicacy to stirring, swirling climaxes.