One of Haydn’s most remarkable piano works, this set of variations is on two themes, the first in F minor, the second in F major. The autograph manuscript (in New York Public Library) is headed ‘Sonata’ and dated 1793, while a manuscript copy with a title page in Haydn’s hand title calls it ‘Un piccolo divertimento scritto e composto per la stimatissima Signora de Ployer’ (Barbara von Ployer, for whom Mozart composed the Piano Concerto K453). Haydn took the work with him to London on his second visit (1794–5) where he played it on one of Broadwood pianos that he had come to admire on his first trip to England. It was not published until 1799, when it was given the title ‘Variations’, and a new dedication: to Baroness Josephine von Braun, wife of the director of the court theatres in Vienna and also the dedicatee of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Op. 14. Haydn originally ended the work with the second F major variation and a short coda. He then had second thoughts, adding a reprise of the F minor theme and a long, harmonically adventurous coda that ends in despair. It has been suggested – not unreasonably – that the tragic mood of this work may owe something to the sudden death in January 1793 of Haydn’s close friend Maria Anna von Genzinger.

Alban Berg first met Schoenberg in 1904 and continued to study with his until 1910. It’s not certain exactly when he composed the Piano Sonata, but towards the end of his studies Berg started to work on exercises in sonata structures and it is likely that the work emerged from these in 1907–8. Published in 1910 by Schlesinger in Berlin and Haslinger in Vienna, the first public performance took place in Vienna on 24 April 1911, given by Etta Werndorff, another member of the Schoenberg circle who also gave the premiere of Schoenberg’s Klavierstücke Op. 11 (Schoenberg also painted her portrait twice). Douglas Jarman (in New Grove) described Berg’s Sonata as ‘the last work he wrote directly under his teacher’s guidance … in effect his graduation piece, the work in which he set out to demonstrate what he had learned from both Schoenberg’s teaching and Schoenberg’s music.’ The Sonata is a single movement, highly concentrated, in which Berg generates a number of distinctive ideas from short motifs (heard at the start) which serve as the musical seeds for a work of powerful originality. Following the precepts of his teacher, Berg is not afraid to look to the past for inspiration and the structure is broadly in sonata form (exposition–development–recapitulation). The musical language is more uncompromising, stretching the possibilities of post-Wagnerian harmonies to breaking point, but always with a highly expressive trajectory that is as much emotional as it is architectural. Berg’s Sonata is an outstanding ‘Opus One’, the young composer’s creative voice emerging more or less fully formed. 

Nigel Simeone 2024

Adagio 
Menuetto I, Menuetto II 
Allegro 
 

Mozart composed his first set of six solo piano sonatas in 1774 and 1775. The 18-year-old composer spent three months in Munich working on his opera La finta giardinera (first performed on 13 January 1775) and the last of the set (K.284) was written for Baron von Dürnitz in Munich. The other five (including K.282) were composed either in Salzburg during 1774, or in Munich on Mozart’s arrival in the city. Each of the sonatas in this set is in three movements, but K.282 is the only one to begin with a slow movement. This is an expansive Adagio based on two themes and incorporating a development of the first theme as part of the second half of the movement, after which this theme is only heard again in the coda. This is followed by a Minuet, in B flat major with a contrasting second Minuet at the centre of the movement in the work’s home key of E flat. The main theme of the finale is notable for its leaping octaves and a mood of high spirits.   

Sehr mäßig (Very moderate) 
Sehr schnell (Very fast) 
Ruhig fließend (Calmly flowing) 
 

Almost thirty years after Berg’s Sonata, Webern’s Variations, Op. 27 is a work which demonstrates twelve-tone technique at its most refined and distilled. The title only tells part of the story. The third movement – and the first to be finished, in July 1936 – was described by René Leibowitz (the leading French apostle for the Second Viennese School) as a set of five variations. This is confirmed by Webern himself: ten days after finishing the third movement he wrote that ‘the completed part is a set of variations. The whole work will be a kind of Suite.’ According to Webern himself, the first movement (completed in August 1936) is in sonata form, while the second (November 1936) is a kind of scherzo. In other words, Webern’s idea of calling the complete piece a ‘Suite’ is perhaps a better description of the overall structure than ‘Variations’. The first performance was given in 1937 by Peter Stadlen who worked closely with Webern while preparing the premiere. His copy, marked up by Webern (published in 1979) contains several revelations. The most important of these is that Webern did not see this piece as an exercise in chilly abstraction – the very first page is covered in markings suggesting highly expressive music: ‘coolly passionate lyricism’ at the start, ‘molto espressivo’ a few bars later, and so on. Always conscious of his musical heritage, Webern likened the first movement to a late Brahms intermezzo, and the second movement to the ‘Badinerie’ from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2. The result is music that is challenging for listener and player, but enormously rewarding too. 

Brahms composed the Handel Variations in 1861, when he was in his late twenties. The dedication is to Clara Schumann to whom Brahms presented the variations as a birthday present. Comprising twenty-five concise variations and a much more expansive closing fugue, the work is ingeniously structured in what Nicholas Cook described as ‘a series of waves, both in terms of tempo and dynamics, leading to the final fugue.’ The theme was drawn from the third movement of Handel’s Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in B flat. Intriguingly, this is entitled ‘Aria con varizioni’: in other words, Brahms created a new set of variations on a theme that was originally intended to be treated that way. Brahms wrote that for him the most important feature of a variation theme was not the melody but the bass line: ‘it is the firm foundation on which I can build my stories … Over the given bass, I invent something new and discover new melodies about it.’ The essential point here is not that the bass line should be unchanged (Brahms makes plenty of changes) but that he viewed it as the way to control the overall structure. The expressive range of the Handel Variations – their emotional ebb-and-flow – is remarkable: the first five variations move from the lively syncopated accents of Variation 1, to the sinuous lines of Variation 2, the elegance of Variation 3, the powerful octaves of Variation 4 and the lyrical minor-key contrasts of Variation 5. These are all wonderful examples of the ‘new melodies’ Brahms was able to discover in Handel’s theme, and the process is continued with astonishing imagination in all the variations that follow, culminating in the magnificent final fugue, its subject derived from the opening phrase of Handel’s theme. Combining pianistic virtuosity and the most imaginative handling of counterpoint, it is a heroic peroration. 

Nigel Simeone 2024