Brahms - Paganini Variations [Arrau] After the Handel Variations, these Paganini Variations are probably Brahms's most exciting, two books of Paganini's theme, and then fourteen variations in each book, the whole work lasts roughly 25 minutes, so each theme / variation on average lasts just less than a minute [50 seconds], this is enough time to lay down some startling idea, but then instead of developing it, you move on to the next variation, with each variation building on the previous one, one of the devices of variation composition, is to juxtapose fast and slow variations, giving great contrast and excitement to the whole, so variations aren't merely about seeing how much you can pull a tune about to create something different, but it's about variety too, 'a variety of variations'.
It's been nearly 20 years since the Chilean Pianist Claudio Arrau passed away, and he's left us a great legacy of recordings, this 3 disc Brahms box set is just one of them, handsomely housed in a plastic 'fatbox', the Paganini Variations were recorded in 1974, only last month i was raving about the 4 Ballades by Arrau in this set [1st November 2010], the pictures of Arrau [by Christian Steiner] are really well done.
The variations i enjoyed the most were 4, 9 & 11 from Book One, and 4 & 12 from Book Two, unhelpfully, each variation is not cued as a track on this recording, but each Book is one long continuous track, and each variation seems to come in two halves, where the tune is repeated again in the second half, but with slight but substantial variation, here are all the highlights on YouTube, with disc timings in yellow, and timings from YouTube in white,
Variation 4 [Book One / 1:59-3:04], with high treble trills [1:59-2:10], treble chimes [2:15-2:20], and treble staccato endings [2:42-2:55] [1:59-3:04].
Variation 9 [Book One / 5:18-6:42], with a sweeping gait, and deep rollings / waves [5:18-5:46], and then pleading treble repetitions [5:47-6:42] [5:18-6:42].
Variation 4 [Book Two / 2:27-3:13], a lazy waltz in the high treble, with real bird twitters caught on the recording! [2:27-2:55], becoming sad and dreamy [2:56-3:13] [2:27-3:13].
Variation 12 [Book Two / 0:34-1:55], a noble legato, very Schumann-esque [0:34-1:55], with high treble apotheosis notes [1:20 & 1:46] [7:22-8:44].
A work with an endless variety of angles and insights, i suppose i've chosen a lot of variations that have things high in the treble which excite, and also probably the longer variations as well, these are very well recorded and presented by Arrau [except for the lack of track cuing within each of the Books].
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