Variations on a Nursery Song, Op.25

Variations I-XI -

Finale fugato: allegro vivace

Dohnányi was not the first to write variations on the tune we know as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” or, indeed, to have a little fun with it. Long before the Hungarian composer exercised his comic talents on it Mozart wrote his witty piano variations on “Ah! Vous dirai-je, maman” - which is basically the same tune. Dohnányi probably also had the French version in mind, not so much because the tune originated in France or even because he knew the Mozart piece as because he liked the cheeky words that go with it. Certainly, the reluctance of the child in the song to take things seriously is reflected in spades in the variations he dedicated in 1914 “to the enjoyment of lovers of humour and to the annoyance of others.”

If you do not have a sense of humour you will certainly find the opening of the work more than a little annoying. The Maestoso introduction is long enough, ominous enough and dramatic enough to furnish a Wagnerian epic. The thematic anticipations, like those prominently proclaimed by the four horns, are nowhere near clear enough for anyone not in the know to guess what - after four minutes’ wait, a crashing orchestral chord and a suspenseful silence - the soloist is about to utter. In one of the most artful of all examples of anti-climax the pianist makes his or her first entry with nothing more momentous than that nursery song in simple octaves, just one note in each hand, adorned only by the occasional chromatic tease in the melodic line. The joke is appreciated by the bassoon at least and it is with its encouragement that the soloist scampers off into the triplet figuration of the first variation. The horns offer a more serious aspect of the theme for the second variation but violins and violas reply with a delightfully melodious parody of Brahms in the third.

In fact, the orchestra is unfailingly resourceful, not least in the grotesque dialogue in the fourth variation between two bassoons and double bassoons on the one hand with two flute and piccolo on the other. The fifth variation is a joint enterprise, harp and glockenspiel collaborating with the piano in an ingenious imitation of a musical box. So is the sixth, which requires as much agility from woodwind as from the piano in the hyperactive foreground to the echoes of the original theme on clarinet and flute in the background. The Viennese waltz in the seventh variation is the soloist’s inspiration but that doesn’t stop the violins taking it up and making something even more stylish of it, just as the piano takes up the march introduced by woodwind and horns in the next variation. Sinister harmonies on muted horns lead from there into a danse macabre with lugubrious bassoons, weird woodwind, skeletal xylophone and a skittering piano.

The tenth variation is a passacaglia based on a seven-note theme anticipated by the piano in the transition from the preceding variation, definitively introduced by trombones and repeated over and over again either in the bass or, later, on solo wind instruments while strings and piano engage in an orgy of romantic melody around it. Although the passacaglia is long enough and serious enough to balance the ominous introduction to the work, it is not the end. It is followed by an eleventh variation - a no less impressive wind chorale interspersed with harmonic diversions on harp, celesta and piano - an energetically simulated fugue initiated by violas and, after a suitably dramatic chord and pause, a last recall of the simple little tune.