Immanuel Bah plays Variations on a theme by Paganini, Op 35 I & II books by Johannes Brahms

Immanuel Bah plays Variations on a theme by Paganini, Op 35 I & II books by Johannes Brahms Become our Patron! Support us! :   / lesalondelamusique   Subscribe to our Official Channel Telegram: English: https://t.me/smclassicenglish Italian: https://t.me/smclassicitaliano Spanish: https://t.me/smclassicspanish Subscribe to our Official Instagram Channel:   / lesalondelamusique   Subscribe to our Official Facebook page:   / lesalondelamusique   Subscribe to our Official Youtube Channel:    / lesalondelamusique   In the 19th century, Nicolò Paganini was the embodiment of the virtuoso. Many composers used his musical themes for their own creative work. Johannes Brahms likewise did not hesitate to use a work by Paganini the violin virtuoso as the basis for a composition for his own instrument, the piano, using the Capriccio no. 24 in a minor from Paganini’s op. 1 as his model. Brahms initially viewed the Variations, composed in 1862/63, merely as a “finger exercise” for himself, and had no intention of publishing them. After several years he fortunately decided otherwise, and thus with this Urtext edition pianists who are Brahms aficionados can enjoy an unusual virtuoso masterpiece. In contrast to the variations on the same theme by Chopin, Schumann and Liszt, those by Brahms offer a much richer, more novel spectrum of pianistic variations. Whether players find them to be “Witch's Variations”, as did Clara Schumann, is a matter for them. Brahms’s variations open up a whole world of interpretative challenges, and take technical problems as the point of departure for expressive recreation. They include studies in double sixths, double thirds, huge leaps between the hands or with one hand. There are trills at the top of wide-spread chords, polyrhythms between the parts, octave studies, octave tremolos. Other variations explore staccato accompaniments against legato phrasing, glissandi, rapid contrary motion, and swooping arpeggios against held notes. During many of the variations the figuration is systematically transferred from right hand to left, and vice-versa. Not that each variation confines itself to one technical feature; several may be combined and in both books the final variation is welded to an extended three-part coda, covering an even larger range of difficult techniques and bringing each book to an end in scintillating style. Generally speaking, in Book I the focus is on bravura writing. Technical demands occupy the music’s foreground, leaving scant space for Brahms’s habitual melodic developments; nevertheless, the delicate arabesques of the major-key variation 12, and the Hungarian accents of No 13, with its ‘gypsy’ glissandi, are delightful. Book II is somewhat gentler in character, with compositional virtues more predominant. The dreamy waltz of variation 4, the skittish arpeggios of No 6 with its ‘demonic’ crushed semitones, the ‘violinistic’ No 8 with its pizzicato effects, the cool nocturne of No 12 (the only variation in either book that strays from the orbit of A minor/major, into F), and the gently cascading thirds of No 13—these all combine to make Book II the more satisfying from a purely musical standpoint. Taken as a whole, however, the Paganini Variations is a stunning demonstration of Brahms’s compositional skills.