Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Opus 38: Variations on a Theme by Paganini
composed: 1862-3 (age 29-30)
published: 1866
first performance: Zürich, November 25, 1865 (Johannes Brahms, piano)

Scores are here: Book I and Book II.

Remember how we were listening to The Essential Canon of Classical Music a year ago? Yes, we’re still doing that. I just haven’t kept up with it. Number 312 on the list. We were listening to it exactly a year ago this month.

This is an interesting case.

Dubal quotes James Huneker telling us that the variations “are also vast spiritual problems.” This seemed silly to me while listening. The piece was obviously a basically technical proposition, for the composer as well as the performer.

But then when the variations started turning up in isolation on my iPod’s shuffle – each one is individually tracked in the Kissin recording – they began to come to life as distinct pieces, extremely tiny though they each are. The through-line of the variation form became something wistful and nostalgic – because each little piece that whips by while I’m on the subway is tied poignantly to something else, something not contained in itself, and none of them quite embodies it completely (or consummates it completely, in whatever sense it might).

Heard in series, their proximity to one another (and to the theme) detracts from their individuality. This is a bit of a paradox of variation form. By inserting some arbitrarily long hiatuses between them, I’ve been able to hear them as something more than technical. Maybe they’re not “vast spiritual problems,” but I can sympathize with the sentiment – there is, at least, something yearning and pained about them. There is the sense that they have put up some resistance, some struggle, in their irreversible journey away from the theme toward their individual selves, but that they’ve reached a bittersweet acceptance.

Still, the slower, more tender variations remain more interesting than the fastest, most difficult ones, many of which have an aridity to them that I don’t think can be performed away. Let me mention that this set is exceedingly – I daresay excessively – difficult. I usually like to play through any piano piece to get a little closer to it, fudging the hard parts, but this piece resisted even the roughest stumbling through – it’s ALL hard parts. I could see what everything was, but frequently couldn’t even make a noise that reminded me of it. The demands in terms of leaping and strength are maybe the highest I’ve ever encountered. And for what? It’s fair for a composer to take pride in the sophistication of his work, but the raw difficulty is, if anything, a count against him – a better composer could have found a more idiomatic way of creating effectively the same sounds. Difficulty is only of value to the show-off performer, and even then, only if it actually appears difficult. This piece sounds easier than it is; what could possibly justify that?

If Brahms’s principal objective here was to investigate technical possibilities for the piano, I’m not at all impressed – his devices are extremely inefficient. Compared to someone with an actual gift for pianistic technical invention, like Rachmaninoff, he’s downright clumsy – elsewhere as much as here, but here he puts that clumsiness nakedly on display. If his objective was to compose music that just happened to be technically challenging, I think he got the proportions wrong. That said, there’s still definite musical value here – it just took me a little while to feel it.

Speaking of Rachmaninoff, his more famous variations on the same theme share with the Brahms an emphasis on brilliance, but otherwise the pieces go in very different directions. On the whole, Brahms’s are rather more serious, but only a seriousness addict would say that his is the better work. Of course, classical music is a bastion for seriousness addicts and it’s often their opinions that influence the formation of would-be canons like this one. Rachmaninoff’s all-around better-made crowd-pleaser is on the list too, of course.

I know, just because the pieces on the same theme doesn’t make this comparison fair.

Dubal suggests:
Bachauer: Mercury 434340-2
Michelangeli: Arkadia 903
Biret: Naxos 8.550350
Rodriguez: Elan 2200

Four suggestions! Nope, didn’t hear any of those. We heard Michelangeli, on the second of his “Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century” sets, but I gather this isn’t the same as the recommended recording. It’s not complete either, and he shuffles the order. Also heard the Evgeny Kissin recording, which is, no question, excellently played, and is the recording that was kind enough to break the variations into tracks so that I could think about them individually. But as a whole I felt he made the whole thing seem too easy and smooth to attract much attention. The most immediately satisfying recording, though I only listened a couple times, was the Julius Katchen recording, which had a bit more drama to it.

Grove’s Dictionary says:

By comparison with almost every other keyboard work of Brahms, the Variations on a Theme by Paganini (op.35) place an emphasis on extreme virtuosity. (Clara Schumann called them ‘witch variations’ and regretted they were beyond her capacity.) The more didactic nature of the set is suggested by its principal title: ‘Studies for the Piano’. As with the études of other great composers, however, including Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy, technique is always allied with powerful and widely ranging musical expression.

Yeah, they’re obligated to say that last bit. But trust me, these are no Chopin Etudes. I just don’t feel like this was Brahms’s game. His strengths were elsewhere.