PIANO MASTERPIECES

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his Variations on a Minuet by Duport in 1789: an entry in his thematic catalogue dated Potsdam, 29 April 1789, lists ‘6 Variations for piano’ but in fact there were 9 of them. The cellist and composer Jean-Pierre Duport had been recruited by Frederick the Great in 1773 and after his nephew Friedrich Wilhelm II was crowned King of Prussia in 1786, Duport was made responsible for the chamber music at court. The theme is taken from one of Duport’s cello sonatas and its buoyant mood sets the tone for much of what follows, although the sixth variation is slow and dream-like. 

(C) Nigel Simeone

Hans Gál studied with Brahms’s close friend Eusebius Mandyczewski and they later went on to edit the first complete edition of Brahms’s works. Gál’s opera, Die heilige Ente (‘The Sacred Duck’) was first performed in 1923 and enjoyed considerable success in Germany, and the Piano Sonata, Op.28, was composed four years later, during one of the happiest and most productive periods in Gál’s career, at a time when he was also Director of the Mainz Conservatoire. This success was cut short with the advent of the Nazis, when Gál was immediately dismissed from his post in March 1933 and his music banned. He returned to Vienna but was forced to flee after the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938. It was the British musicologist Donald Tovey who invited Gál to Edinburgh, the city which he then made his home. 

In 1962, Gál himself wrote that Piano Sonata was ‘a concentrated, tightly-knit structure; the form of the four movements is completely clear. It will amuse you to hear me confess that I have only just noticed this on looking at the score: when you write in one go, you invent organically, whether you want to or not.’ 

(C) Nigel Simeone

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Variations on God Save the King were written in 1803 for the Scottish music publisher George Thomson. The composer sent them with a note that they were not too difficult and hoping that they would be a success. He also hoped to show the English ‘what a blessing they have’ with the tune, one which certainly seems to have fired his musical imagination.  

(C) Nigel Simeone

Franz Schubert composed his Impromptu, D935, No.3, in 1827. It is another set of variations, the theme drawn from his own incidental music for the play Rosamunde (1823) which had already reappeared in the A minor String Quartet. With typical ingenuity, Schubert fashions a set of variations that are full of subtle surprises. 

(C) Nigel Simeone

Frédéric Chopin’s late Berceuse (1844) was originally called ‘Variantes’ and its theme (echoing a Polish folksong) is followed by 16 short variations, presented over a ground bass which establishes and sustains the mood of a cradle song.

(C) Nigel Simeone

The Ballade in F minor (1842) is a complex structure which combines elements of sonata form with that of variations, a magnificent contrapuntally complex work which English pianist John Ogdon described as ‘the most exalted, intense and sublimely powerful of all Chopin’s compositions.’ 

© Nigel Simeone