Customer Reviews

Brahms Variations

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This is a really good idea for an album--all the sets of variations that Brahms composed for his own instrument. And while the great work here is of course the Handel Variations, the one that stays with me both as music and performance is the earlier Schumann Variations. This is an obvious tribute to and elegy for Brahms's mentor, who was dying in the asylum in Endenich when the work was written. The elegy comes in some of the slower, more solemn variations. The tribute, though, comes in the quicksilver variations that seem to capture or recapture the brilliant fantasy-like variations in Schumann's great Etudes Symphoniques. Did Brahms think about this as he wrote his work? I don't know, but Brahms has never sounded more Schumannesque than in his Schumann Variations. David Korevaar conveys perfectly both the sense of fantasy and elegy that I mention; this seems to me a near-perfect performance.

The Variations on a Theme of Handel points up a sad truth about Brahms's music making: the more skill and craft he acquired, the more he lost that fantastic, high-Romantic quality that informs some of his earliest compositions. This is a great work, building logically to the grand fugal finale through a series of variations that are textbook studies in the art of variation writing. But the spark, the fire has died down, and we have to live with perfection instead of great inspiration. That's my thinking anyway. And maybe it's just me, but I think Korevaar doesn't bring quite the sense of poise to these variations as to the Schumann set. This is a very, very fine performance, but I hear, for example, Julius Katchen's performance at the back of my head, and that's a great performance, with an inexorable logic that rolls on naturally to that great fugal finale. I sort of hear the seams more in Kovaar's performance, fine as it is.

As to the other sets of variations, Brahms's set of variations on his own theme (Op. 21, No. 1) is mostly gentle, amiable, rather forgettable music coming from a master like Brahms. And the piano version of the variations-form slow movement from the First Sextet, for all that it is idiomatic and well wrought, lacks the pathos and gravity of the string version-it would almost have to. Ah, but those Variations Op. 21, No. 2! Here is Brahms working in two favorite media, variations form and gypsy music. The combination is a winner, and Korevaar's performance is, too--fiery, devil-may-care.

All in all, this is a very fine concept brought off almost to perfection. Ivory Classics' piano reproduction is wonderfully truthful, too. This sounds like a real grand piano in a very believable hall setting.

I have no doubt that David Korevaar is a gifted pianist, but his performances on this cd sound somewhat pedantic and monotonous to me. Part of the problem is the piano. It sounds beautiful indeed, but it doesn't seem capable of much flexibility. Truly soft playing seems to be impossible and there is little tonal differentation. The acoustic is also too reverberant for my taste, with a resulting lack of clarity. But Korevaar also must share part of the blame. The Handel Variations is one of my favorite works, but Korevaar makes very little of the contrasts written into the score. I don't have the score, so my comments can't be too specific, but one of the variations is clearly a lighter version of the previous variation. But there is little contrast in Korevaar's playing. The fierce variation beginning with wild trills leading to a descent down the keyboard sounds positively tame here (contrast Fleisher's wild ride). The final variation should sound joyous, but here sounds mostly loud, as does the fugue that concludes the work. The other sets of variations have much the same problems. Korevaar tends to sectionalize individual variations while playing down the contrasts between variations. The best performance of the great Handel Variations I've ever heard is a live performance by Claudio Arrau on Aura, but since it's apparently no longer available, Fleisher and Serkin will give you a better idea of the beauty and majesty of Brahms' greatest set of keyboard variations.