Theme and Variations in C sharp minor, Op.73 [1895]

Writing what was to be his longest work for solo piano and working a in a form that was new to him, Fauré would have found no inspiration in the French tradition: except perhaps in the Saint-Saëns Variations on a Theme of Beethoven for two pianos, it had no serious model to offer. Even so, in spite of the clear similarity between his solemn theme in C sharp minor and that of Schumann’s Études symphoniques, it would be exaggerating the case to say that he took his favourite German composer as a model here. Fauré preserves a positively classical regularity - retaining the basic structure of the original theme until the tenth of his eleven variations and staying with the C sharp minor tonality until the very last of them - and at the same time his thinking is no less poetic than in forms he had himself developed like the Nocturnes and Barcarolles.

The essential Fauré charm is already evident in the scarcely altered first variation, where the theme is presented in its original Quasi adagio tempo in the left hand under a decorative ribbon of semi-quavers in the right. In the next four variations, as he progressively accelerates the tempo, Fauré does, it is true, call on various Schumannesque devices in figuration - but only to offset the very personal beauty of the Molto Adagio sixth variation. This, a slow dance - a pavane almost - with the theme rising below a counter-melody descending from the rarely visited upper extreme of the keyboard, is the first of a more contemplative group of variations, including the serene eighth (Andante molto moderato) and the exquisitely harmonised ninth (Quasi adagio again). The great inspiration of the work, however, is the way in which, instead of stopping it where it seems to end with the virtuoso tenth variation (Allegro vivo), he holds on to its last chord and turns the harmonies to C sharp major for a visionary “variation-conclusion” as the composer modestly called it.