Brahms' Händel Variations

[cloches_de_geneve]

What a great piece! Exceptionally, grumpy Brahms seems to have been in a good mood when he wrote this piece... Its so full of inspiration and exuberance.

How are they pianistically. Hard, extremely hard, or bordering the impossible??

[Kassaa]

I believe tds plays this. The fuga looks quite difficult, and there are double-note trills through out the whole piece I believe.

[m]

What a great piece! Exceptionally, grumpy Brahms seems to have been in a good mood when he wrote this piece... Its so full of inspiration and exuberance.

How are they pianistically. Hard, extremely hard, or bordering the impossible??

Some believe, the best piano piece Brahms ever wrote.

Musically, the theme is the hardest. Technically, some variations and fugue are VERY hard.

[ramseytheii]

Charles Rosen wrote a fantastic essay about the pianisim of Brahms and included some examples from this work.  He noted that Brahms ironically poked fun at Listzian pianism by including Listzian things such as double octaves and sixths (both to be found in Handel variations), but in a deliberately awkward, and non-virtuosic-sounding way.  I think this is a brilliant insight, and coupled with Brahms insistence on slow performance for his music, it alleviates a lot of the stress that one can find in this piece.  For instance, the variation with the broken octaves in the left hand and the parallel sixths in the right with some trills, does not have to sound like Liszt or even a Chopin etude.  The important quality here is that boisterousness, not the virtuosity.  I think the main challenges of this piece are the musical ones, and if the notes should ever give you trouble, think to yourself, This is not Liszt!!

Walter Ramsey

[Waldszenen]

It's a beautiful piece but unfortunately not often recorded or performed (probably due to its difficulty). I have the Nikolai Petrov recording and it's really well played.

[pianistimo]

i'm working on those right now, too.  seems that certain variations are harder than others, but not terribly difficult until the end.

[burstroman]

This is one of my favorite recital works.  The emotional facets of the work seem almost endless.

[apion]

1. MUSICALLY.  Brahms Handel Variations are among the top-3 sets of variations ever composed (along with Bach's Goldbergs and Beethoven's Diabelli).  The monumental architecture / construction of the piece is absolutely flawless, and the tremendous breadth of the variations allows for the greatest degree of artistic expression.  Each variation flows seamlessly, effortlessly, and logically into the next -- giving the impression that there is no possible alternative way to arrange the variations without the entire structure collapsing.

2. TECHNICALLY.  Not impossible (like Brahms Paganini Variations), but very, very difficult.  Taken as a whole, the piece is highly virtuosic.  And the fugue is an absolute showpiece in technical mastery.

[dnephi]

"the Handel variations are an intellectual feat, and the Paganini a technical tour-de-force." -Ernest Hutcheson.

Compare Handel's own variations to Brahms's :p.

[iumonito]

Much easier than the Paganini ones.  The fugue is not that bad once you are into it, not awkward at all.  Very polyphonic.  It is lots of fun, although the subject is somewhat static harmonically.

And everybody and their brother records this:  Arrau, Katchen, Ax, Serkin, Ashkenazy, Schiff, Bolet (my favorite)...

You can nicely think of it as a catalogue of baroque styles and a couple Hungarian rhapsodies (more like Op. 21 rather than Liszt's third).  Very entertaining if you don't mind B-flat major.