Saint-Saëns was one of the great pianists of his age, albeit in the strict, prim style severe of the previous epoch, whose crackling precision he carried into the twentieth century. A lifelong Parisian surrounded by a dazzling array of talent, the sheer edge of his genius seemed to cut him off from more than superficial attachments to those less gifted. But encountering Liszt in 1866, in Paris for the first performance of his "Gran" Mass—the aged Liszt whose mightiest works lay behind him—Saint-Saëns experienced the shock of recognition, the deep artistic impact of another personality. On March 8, in the salon of Princess Metternich, he was tapped to play beside Liszt, reading (that is, transposing at sight) from the orchestral score two movements from Liszt's Mass, occasioning Liszt's remark, "It is possible to be as much of a musician as Saint-Saëns; it is impossible to be more of one!" Then, Liszt played solo. Saint-Saëns recalled, "...from beneath his fingers, almost unconsciously, and with an astonishing range of nuances, there murmured, surged, boomed, and stormed the waves of the Legend of St. Francis of Paule walking on the waters. Never again shall we see or hear anything to compare with it." The consequences of this meeting would take decades to shake out, interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War. Through the 1870s Saint-Saëns emulated Liszt in the composition of symphonic poems, but it was inevitable that he should follow Liszt's lead in the Transcendental and Paganini Études in the exploration of keyboard technique. His own set of Études (6), composed in 1877, opens disarmingly with a re-composition of the Preludio of the Transcendental Études, whose keyboard-sweeping bravura is extended and enlarged in an homage out-Heroding Herod, so to speak. The second requires the pianist to bring out a sighing melody embedded in gently throbbing chords—a study in finger independence. The third (dedicated to Anton Rubinstein) features a Prelude for alternating hands in a toccata-like disgorgement of flashing triplets leading to a briskly busy Fugue capped by vehement octaves. The fourth sets a melody of pleading charm amid the constant play of two against three—a study in rhythm. The fifth is another Prelude and Fugue, shadowing a confiding melody in a shimmer of tremolos in fifths and sixths to introduce a ruminative contrapuntal exercise. The series is rounded off with a giddy waltz, a scintillant salon trifle, though the lightning precision required to bring it off is no trifling matter.

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