Variations in B flat major on Là ci darem la mano, Op.2

Although Chopin is not known to have made any kind of arrangement of his Mozart Variations for piano and orchestra, pianists have had access to a solo version ever since 1839 when the Viennese publisher Tobias Haslinger - who had published the original nine years earlier - issued an arrangement with the orchestral part incorporated in the piano part. The composer presumably had no objection. In any case, in a work even less resourcefully scored for orchestra than the piano concertos Chopin was to write two or three years later, the losses are minimal. In tonight’s version, which is based on an edition by the Chopin pupil Karol Mikuli, the work is a few minutes shorter. Since the cuts are made mainly in the overlong preparation for the first statement of the Mozart theme - the Giovanni and Zerlina’s duet Là ci darem la mano from the first act of Don Giovanni - this need not be considered a serious deprivation. The one disadvantage of the arrangement is that, without the orchestral part, the second variation (disingenuously headed Veloce, ma accuratamente) sounds too like the first (Brillante) where the theme is similarly disguised in the left hand.

Whatever Chopin thought of the solo-piano arrangement, the original version, which he had introduced to the world in Vienna in 1829, had served its purpose: the Haslinger edition of the score had brought the composer to the attention of Robert Schumann who, in his first published piece of music criticism, promptly proclaimed him a genius. Although Schumann was over-imaginative in hearing all kinds of allusions to the opera in the variations - Chopin said he “could die laughing” at such extravagant notions - he was uncommonly perceptive in detecting true creativity where others saw only “bravura and figuration.” There is no shortage of those things but there is also much beauty in the Sempre sostenuto third variation, no little rhythmic wit in the Con bravura fourth variation and, after the peculiarly operatic but distinctly non-Mozartian Adagio introduction to the fifth and last variation, an irresistibly vigorous Alla Polacca.

Gerald Larner©