Caprice arabe, for 2 pianos, op. 96
Romantic Capriccio Two pianos
In brief

This Caprice arabe for two pianos mixes an oriental-tinged melody with virtuosic flights, alternating sung passages and percussive runs that require a fluid sense of shading to convey its capricious, shimmering character. You will need to work on Tempo rubato (3.1/5), learning to bend the beat subtly between the two players so the line breathes while keeping ensemble coherence, and on Doubles notes (2.5/5), which demand finger precision and controlled attack speed to maintain clarity and contour in fast chordal passages. It belongs to the Romantic period and functions as a brilliant, fanciful showpiece in Saint-Saëns’s output, designed to highlight color and dialogue between two keyboards. I do not list a reference recording here because I am not fully certain of a single widely recognized version for this specific two-piano arrangement.

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Sheet music

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Formation

Two pianos · 2 performers

Required forces
Piano 2 performers
Playable parts
Piano I Piano II
MusicCoach difficulty
60/100
Intermediate
Likely range : 48–72/100
Confidence : 35% · to confirm
BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedVirtuoso
Exam grade
About grade 6 to 7

Estimated from our difficulty score, not taken from an exam syllabus. Checked against 333 works on the ABRSM syllabus: the exact grade is right 7 times out of 10, and within one grade 99 times out of 100.

Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.

Where this work sits
050100

Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.

The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.

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Relative difficulty
38%
Among Camille Saint-Saëns
51%
Era Romantic
66%
Genre
Estimated skills
Pedaling
Sustain pedal
1
Style
Romantic style
1
Rhythm
Tempo rubato
1
Technique
Double notes
1
Technique
Fast passages
1
What to play next?

Each suggestion combines difficulty gap, risk, confidence and skill overlap. The first two cards in each column are the most useful pedagogically.

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