Sämtliche Werke für Klavier solo Vol. 3
Variationen op. 21/1&2
Händel-Variationen op. 24
Paganini-Variationen op. 35
Andreas Boyde, Klavier
The German pianist Andreas Boyde, who has established
his home in London, has made Johannes
Brahms’ piano compositions the focus of his work.
He is recording Brahms’ entire oeuvre for piano solo
on a series of 5 CDs released by OehmsClassics. After
the three piano sonatas and the works op. 4, 9 and
10, vol. III follows with a programme of variations:
op. 21 no. 1 & 2, the Handel Variations op. 24 and
the Paganini Variations op. 35.
Andreas Boyde does not strain for effect in his Brahms
interpretations; to the public, he imparts a message
of intensity through clever disposition and musical
veracity: “Boyde manages to square the circle: maximum
intensity with youthful exuberance is combined with the
transparency of the piano score and the tenderness of suddenly
appearing lyricism”, was the SZ’s opinion of his
sonatas no. 1&2.
Variations on Variations: Brahms’s reinventions
of an ‘old-fashioned’ form
“I send you here some variations, dearest Jussuf.
They may not be worth much, but perhaps
better things can come from this theme. Write
to me about them with your usual welcome
forthrightness.“
Johannes Brahms to Joseph Joachim,
Düsseldorf, July 1856
Few forms suited Brahms’s particular compositional
concerns more admirably than
theme and variation sets. A lover of formal discipline,
he could approach its innate ‘restrictions’
with as much strictness – or freedom
– as he chose. As a result, variation sets occur
throughout Brahms’s oeuvre, from the very
first piano sonata in C major Op. 1 to his Op.
120 No. 2 Clarinet Sonata, and also in larger
scale works starting with the Andante of his
Op. 18 String Sextet to the finale of his fourth
and last symphony Op. 98. It was also one of
his favourite vehicles through which to teach
composition. It eminently suited Brahms’s
economy of mind; from a meagre sixteen bars
or so, an infinitude of possibilities could be
spun out; listening to this music, one has the
sense of Brahms mining his thematic material
for its maximum yield.
Typically, Brahms occupied himself with
solo piano variations during a particular phase
of his life before setting the genre aside. The
opus numbers are misleading, in that they
suggest that there is an enormous amount of
music separating the completion of Brahms’s
Op. 9 Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann
(to be found on the second disc of this
set) and the variation sets collected here,
namely Op. 21 Nos. 1 and 2, Op. 24 and Op.
35. The intervening opus numbers include numerous
substantial choral works, solo songs
and the monumental Op. 15 D minor Piano
Concerto. Brahms’s compositional processes
were in fact more consistent; the five sets of
variations (six if we include the Op. 23 set of
variations on a theme by Robert Schumann for
four hands) span a relatively short and pivotal
period in Brahms’ life: from meeting Joseph
Joachim and the Schumanns in Düsseldorf to
professional establishment in Vienna, the city
in which he would spend the rest of his life.
The date of composition for the Op. 21 No.
1 Variations on an Original Theme (insert final
track number) remains uncertain, although
it was possibly begun in 1854 and certainly
complete by early 1857. Op. 21 No. 2 (insert
final track number) seems to be a slightly
earlier work, possibly stemming from 1853.
Certainly we know that in April 1853 Brahms
sent Joseph Joachim an arrangement of
this Hungarian melody as a gift for the great
violin virtuoso. Three years later, Joachim and
Brahms were in the habit of sending each
other compositions for mutual criticism – canons,
variation sets, and larger works. Hence,
between July 1856 and February 1857, it was
natural that Brahms should send both sets
of variations to Joachim. Joachim praised
Brahms’s original theme highly (‘Ausnehmend
schön ist das Thema!’) but otherwise picked
so many faults that Brahms left the work aside
for a while, tidying up both sets for publication
only in 1861. Despite this late publication date,
it is clear that the Op. 21 variations should be
regarded as contemporary with the Op. 9 Variations
which had appeared in 1854.
Brahms often approached genres in sets or
pairs, in which each exemplar would present
a different possibility for the genre (one can
think of the Op. 51 pair of string quartets, or the
pair of clarinet sonatas Op. 120). This is decidedly
true for the Op. 21 variations, in which the
uniquely introspective, lyrical nature of No. 1
could not be further removed from the stamping
Hungarian rhythm that characterizes No.
2. Interestingly, neither theme is obvious variation
material because both contain rhythmic
elements that place unusual restrictions on
the composer. In Op. 21 No. 1, Brahms’s original
theme consists of two nine-bar phrases,
rather than the much more usual eight bars.
The material itself is also much richer than
the usual bare musical bones that lend themselves
to variation; its full lush harmonies
and chromatic richness make it sound like an
elaboration of an idea in itself. Additionally,
where traditional variations would be expected
to display contrast between successive
variations, the mood of Op. 21 No. 1 is almost
hypnotically consistent; the first seven (out of
eleven) variations are introspective and lyrical
in nature. It is true that Variations 8-10 challenge
the underlying peace of the work, with
staccato octaves and menacing minor keys
– the ninth variation practically anticipates
Rachmaninoff in its adventurousness - however
the traditionally virtuosic coda one would
expect at the end of a variation set is abandoned
in favour of a quiet closure.
The Hungarian theme of Op. 21 No. 2 has
far blunter musical material, but shares the
element of rhythmic ambiguity with its sister
set. Brahms frequently used stamping Slavic
rhythms, particularly the combined triple/
quadruple metre that characterizes this theme.
This metric restriction is not abandoned until
the ninth variation (out of a total of thirteen).
The overall mood of this set hearkens back
to the world of the early sonatas; it is grand,
tragico-dramatic and virtuosic. Much of the
pianistic texture in both variation sets, such as
rhythmic ambiguity, fragmentation of themes,
and lyrical textures recalls Schumann’s bestloved
piano works.
To an even greater extent, the Op. 24 Handel
Variations (insert final track number) and
the Op. 35 Paganini Variations (insert final
track number) present two sides of the coin,
the one historical, the other modern. Brahms
mentioned his Handel Variations Op. 24 in a
letter to Clara Schumann of September 1861,
telling her that he had composed a set of variations
for her birthday. (The dedication on the
work reads: ‘Variations for a beloved friend.’)
The theme is from Handel’s first B flat Suite,
where it appears as an Air with Variations.
Brahms owned a first edition of this work dating
from 1733. In many ways, these variations
can be regarded as a kind of compositional
manifesto, declaring Brahms’s fidelity to the
forms and techniques of the past; the theme
is strictly Baroque, and is varied within a tight
harmonic boundary. Nevertheless, the work is
not enslaved to the past; rather it embraces
more than a hundred years of musical history
en route to 1861. On the way, it evokes Baroque
dances and embellishments, late Beethovenian
grand fugues, Weber-esque hunting horns,
Schumannian chromaticism and rhythmic
games, high-Romantic minor-key pathos, the
epic world of Brahms’s own early piano sonatas,
Hungarian dances, music boxes, and
in the final bars, a triumphant pealing of bells
on a dominant pedal that takes the piece to
its vast conclusion. When Brahms played the
work to Wagner at the older composer’s villa
in Penzing in 1864, Wagner (who was otherwise
notoriously rude about Brahms’s work),
commented that the variation set ‘shows what
can still be done with the old forms by somebody
who knows how to handle them.’
Op. 24 appeared in 1862; shortly afterwards,
Brahms made the journey that would determine
the rest of his life: he went to Vienna
that autumn. He rapidly found that he was in
a far more congenial musical environment
than his native Hamburg, mixing with leading
figures of the day such as the virtuoso pianist
Carl Tausig and the musicologist Gustav Nottebohm,
who was working on the Beethoven
sketchbooks and was a great collector of pre-
Bach manuscripts. During this first whirlwind
of a winter, he started working on the Op. 35
Studien für Klavier: Variationen über ein Thema
von Paganini (they appeared in their final
guise in April 1865). This theme needs no introduction,
being based on the virtuoso violinist
Nicolo Paganini’s best-known Capriccio, Op. 1
No. 24, a work which has famously inspired a
range of figures from Schumann and Liszt to
Rachmaninoff and Lutoslawski. This final set
of solo piano variations takes a completely different
tack from Op. 24; dedicated to Tausig,
the piece is an extravagant celebration of
virtuosity. We must remember the original title
‘Studien’, although it seems ludicrous to treat
this piece as a keyboard method. However, it
was published as two complementary books,
each with fourteen variations and a coda,
which can be studied separately or complete.
Until the early twentieth century, performers
even cherry-picked variations from both volumes
to make up their own sets, which is formally
impossible with his other variation sets.
In this recording, the second book is treated
as a continuation, i.e. without the repetition of
the theme.
Brahms’s invocation of Paganini (and by
implication Liszt and the new German school)
in this work was a provocative one. He has
devised an extraordinary range of technical
demands, including passagework in thirds,
fourths, sixths and octaves, trills, leaps in
both hands and cross-rhythms, to name but a
few – and often simultaneously within a single
variation. The final variation with coda is
a monster of relentless octave passagework
(a simpler ossia is notated into the first edition
which, needless to say, is not played here).
This is all combined with characteristically
scrupulous attention to shape, harmony and
meaning, which renders even the trickiest of
passages expressive above all. By the early
1860s, Brahms’s music was already perceived
as anathematic to the New German School,
chiefly represented by Liszt and Wagner, for
its ‘old-fashioned’ qualities. His Op. 35 proves
that he could beat the virtuosity school at its
own game, and truly merited the respect that
Vienna would bestow on him for the remainder
of his life.