This arrangement was modified in its edition and violin indications. A very clean piano part was written. Very good edition of the entire score.

The Méditation is an instrumental entr'acte performed between the scenes of Act II in the opera Thaïs. In the first scene of Act II, Athanaël, a Cenobite monk, confronts Thaïs, a beautiful and hedonistic courtesan and devotée of Venus, and attempts to persuade her to leave her life of luxury and pleasure and find salvation through God. It is during a time of reflection following the encounter that the Méditation is played by the orchestra. In the second scene of Act II, following the Méditation, Thaïs tells Athanaël that she will follow him to the desert.

The piece is in D major and is approximately five minutes long (although there are a number of interpretations that stretch the piece to over six minutes). Massenet may also have written the piece with religious intentions; the tempo marking is Andante religioso, signifying his intention that it should be played religiously (which could mean either strictly in the tempo or literally with religiously-founded emotion) and at walking tempo, or around 60 BPM. The piece opens with a short introduction, with the solo violin quickly entering with the motif. After the violin plays the melody twice, the piece goes into a section marked animato, gradually becoming more and more passionate (Massenet wrote poco a poco appassionato). The climax is reached at a place marked poco piu appassionato (a little more passion) and is then followed by a short cadenza-like passage from the soloist and returns to the main theme. After the theme is played twice, the soloist joins the piano while playing harmonics on the upper register as the piano quietly play below the solo line.

Samuel Dushkin (1891-1976), advisor, duo partner and friend of Igor Stravinsky, wrote several transcriptions for his instrument, the violin, of then well-known and popular melodies from works by Stravinsky, of course, but also by other composers such as Bizet, Rachmaninov, Albé.niz and Wieniawski.

The present collection is a compilation of arrangements by well-known and unknown composers: Exotically tinged melodies by Paul Kirman, R. Felber or Alexander Sasonoff are juxtaposed to a beguiling waltz by Max Reger, tone paintings in Mussorgsky's 'Ripples', George Gershwin's jazzy 'Short Story' and many others. The collection is not complete without a movement from Stravinsky's 'L'Oiseau de feu' and a tango .- spectacular music for the violin.