Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 11/18/2015, uploaded on 06/11/2016

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Variations on a Theme of Corelli in 1931 while he vacationed in Switzerland. It was among his final creations for the piano and followed only by the popular Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Interestingly, it is the only solo piano work he composed outside of his native Russia. The theme of the work, though attributed to Corelli, is in fact La Folía, whose origins, at least in printed music, go back to at least the mid-17^th century and some fifty years before Corelli’s use of it in his Sonata for violin, violone, and harpsichord. It is essentially a chord progression in D minor with a few passing bars in the relative major, but it has over time taken on a distinctive melodic attribute as well. La Folía has captivated many composers’ imaginations, from the Baroque masters, Scarlatti, Handel and Bach, to a passing reference in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and its appearance in Franz Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole.

Written in his drier, less Romantic style, Rachmaninoff’s Variations begins with a stately announcement of La Folía with a clarity that seems almost alien to the composer’s typically complex structures. Quite imaginatively, the twenty variations that follow are organized in a manner that almost resembles a full-scale sonata. The first thirteen encapsulate what might be considered a sonata’s first movement, traversing a variety of moods and establishing the argument of the work. An ornamental and cadenza-like “Interlude,” loosely based on the theme, then follows before proceeding to the next variations. Shifting to the key of D-flat major and thereby emphasizing the opening semitonal movement of the theme itself, the following two variations together form a sort of central slow movement and present La Folía in sweetly lyrical tones. Finally, the remaining five variations form the work’s finale, returning abruptly to the tonic key and building the theme through increasing energetic and vigorous treatments. However, it is with an air of solemnity and mystery that the work fades from the fortissimo of the final variation to close softly in the key of D minor.        Joseph DuBose

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Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Op.42    Sergei Rachmaninoff
The Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Op. 42, composed in 1931, is Rachmaninoff’s last original work for solo piano, and the only solo-piano work composed between 1917 and his death in 1943.

Despite their title, the twenty brief variations are based not on a theme of Arcangelo Corelli (1653 – 1713), but on the popular melody La Folia (“Madness”), which Corelli had used for his Sonata, Op. 5, No. 12, for violin. It is actually an old Iberian folkdance tune, and is said to have been introduced to Rachmaninoff by Fritz Kreisler, to whom the Variations are dedicated. La Folia first appeared in the sixteenth century and has been used by over 150 composers over the course of ensuing centuries.

The Variations are among Rachmaninoff’s finest work, though they are fiendishly difficult and gnarly in their complexity. They have a large-scale structure and a clarity of line lacking in some of his earlier works, and he handles the sad theme with greater rhythmic and harmonic freedom than elsewhere. Noël Goodwin points out that “it is impossible not to see in these Corelli Variations a precursor of the ever-popular Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, for piano and orchestra.”        Program notes by Earl Wild

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.