Brahms: Haydn Variations; Reger: Mozart Variations; Ives/Schuman: Variations on America
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Edition: Music CDCD Release Date: 1992-10-06
Music Label: Elektra / Wea
Music reviews of Brahms: Haydn Variations; Reger: Mozart Variations; Ives/Schuman: Variations on America
Music Review: Variations On Variations
Rating: 5 Stars
Orchestral variations are tricky pieces to pull off, even more than symphonies, symphonic tone poems, or instrumental concerti, because there is sometimes a tendency to sound repetitious. However, almost every composer of some stature has tried their hand at the variation form; and on this 1992 recording by Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic, there are three examples of how the variation form can work miracles.
First off, there's "Variations On `America'" by our own country's Charles Ives, which he originally composed for organ in 1891, when he was all of 17. It actually is a variant on the song we know as "Of Thee I Sing" (and originally comes from the English hymn "God Save The King [Queen])"), and it is done variously in the form of a scherzo, a tarantella, and a polonaise. The work was orchestrated in 1964, ten years after Ives had passed away, by William Schuman, another of America's great composers, and it is in this orchestral version, lasting just a little under eight minutes, that the vast majority of the music-going public knows it by. Unsurprisingly, thanks to Leonard Bernstein championing the work while he held the music director's post, the New York Philharmonic is up to the task here, as is Masur.
The second work is the much-beloved "Variations On A Theme Of Haydn" by Johannes Brahms, which he had composed originally for piano four-hands in 1868 and then decided to orchestrate it as a way of easing his way into completing his First Symphony, which he was still laboring over under the shadow of Beethoven. The theme comes from a wind partite in B Flat Major that Brahms thought was from the great Franz Joseph Haydn, though scholarly research now shows that it may actually have originally been from one of his students, Ignaz Pleyel. In any case, Brahms' genius shines through the variations, which are basically in varying tempos and in both B Flat Major and B Flat Minor, climaxing in a highly dramatic passacaglia variation on the theme.
The third and final work here is the best known work of the late 19th/early 20th century composer Max Reger, the Variations And Fugue On A Theme Of Mozart, which he composed in 1914 and which was based on the opening theme of W.A. Mozart's Piano Sonata In A Major, K. 331. It is put through a series of elaborate orchestral variations, much like the Brahms Haydn Variations, which they closely resemble, having lead more than a few critics to declare it as a mere pastiche of Brahms, a somewhat less than fair criticism. A performance like the one featured here gives lie to that criticism.
Masur and the N.Y.P.O. were always a tremendously professional conductor/orchestral combine during the 1990s and on into the 21st century; and this album of three great orchestral variations can be strongly considered as a more-than-welcome addition to any classical music fan's collection.
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