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Brahms - Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op.35

3,708 views · Published 1 October 2014 · 20:54 · Indexed 5 October 2026

Channel: Felix Li-En · 2014 · Music

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Georges Cziffra, piano
Recorded in Tokyo, 1968

Book 1 - 00:00
Book 2 - 11:44

This work is in two sets or books, each of which presents the theme and then 14 variations, with the last in each set being a somewhat expanded finale.

In Book 1 we have, in successive variations, sixths against thirds, in sixteenth notes (0:25); high-register octaves and chords against low-register sixths (00:50); Polyphony in contrary motion with wide-interval leaps over the keyboard (01:19); chords topped by trills in one hand (first right, then left) against expansive arpeggios in the other (01:56); tricky syncopation and hand-crossing (02:43); and so on.

But there is at the same time a continuous emergence of fresh musical ideas, as when the 11th variation (06:51), for example, breaks out into the loveliest of accompanied “singing” melodies. Equally songful, in all its rich pianistic texture, is the 12th variation (08:08). These two form a little A major slow movement, after which the 13th variation with its octave glissandos comes as a winsome scherzo (09:26), and is then followed by the resounding first-part finale (09:55).

Book 2 restates the theme (here Cziffra left it out), and then presents variations which carry further the lyrical freedom that had been growing in the latter part of the first book. It is as if the Paganini theme were now completely aerated and rarefied into plastic material at Brahms’ bidding. Especially notable are the captivating Viennese waltz which makes up the 4th variation (13:29); the bubbling triplets of the 5th variation (14:14); the light-fingered arpeggio runs up and down the keyboard in the 6th variation (14:36); the beautiful melody in octaves, along with rhythmic complexities, of the 7th variation (14:56); the rhythmic and dynamic laughter of the 8th (15:23).

With the 12th variation (17:29) there is the most beautiful of romantic melodies, and its tender sadness is continued by the 13th variation (18:36). These two form what could be called another “slow movement” and prepare the way of the exhilarating and grand peroration of the 14th variation (19:35).

- - - Sidney Finkelstein, 2006

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