We're talking about what are usually called Brahms' Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35. Yes, those variations. Finger-busters. Problem is they're not. Not variations, that is. Still finger-busters. Observe the title page of the first edition:
Of course you see "Variations". But look at the just above it: "Studies for the Piano." And it's a historical fact that Brahms always referred to the work as his "Paganini Studies." Got very cranky if anyone called them otherwise. Not that he needed more to get cranky about.
Why should we care? Brahms was meticulous in all matters musical. His other sets of variations are called just that, nothing more. He did write his famous 51 Exercises (Uebungen). But nothing else in his Opera Omnia is called "variations".
Studies/Studien translates the French Etudes (in its English usage the initial accent mark has dropped out). And that's the key to what it means for us as listeners or performers.
There's no easy Brahms. All of it makes definite technical demands. Including the variations. But here's the difference. Each of the Paganini Studies makes a couple of demands and relentlessy pushes them. Consider the first variation from Book One. First few bars look not impossible, RH sixths might seem amenable to taming with some practice. But then look at what the LH gets to do: some very nasty LH thirds. Which just keep coming at you and at you, along with the sixths. Did I say these were finger-busters?
Makes in much like the Chopin Etudes. Same principles exactly.
What of the 51 Exercises? An amazing number of them deal exactly with the demands of Op. 35. Brahms wrote some 30 other unpublished ones, now available in the new and excellent Wiener Urtext edition. Exercises, not studies. For Op.35 we can go with Brahms' preference for title, or weasel out by saying "Piano Exercises: Variations on a Theme of Paganini."
Whatever. I'll go with Brahms. And rest my case.
0 comments:
Post a Comment