Symphonic Variations

Once a familiar concert item, Franck’s Symphonic Variations have become a comparative rarity in the the orchestral repertoire over the last fifty years or so – along with similarly once-popular works like the symphonic poems Le Chasseur maudit and Les Eloides, leaving only the Sympony in D minor as a regular reminder of the composer’s unique style and fervent inspiration. Written nearly fifty years before Rachmaninov’s ubiquitous Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which might well have been influenced by it, Franck’s score deserves at least a small proportion of the attention given to that admittedly brilliantly imaginative work.

As the title suggests, Franck’s Symphonic Variations are not just a series of virtuoso episodes strung together in desultory fashion and furnished with modest orchestral accompaniment. On the contrary, it is a thoroughly integrated construction in three main sections – introduction, variations, finale – in which piano and orchestra participate on equal terms. And it isn’t about just one theme either. Everything is up for discussion here, including the aggressive gestures in dotted rhythm on unison strings in the opening bars and the quietly drooping piano melody which eventually succeeds in turning away orchestral wrath. While these ideas are developed a new theme makes an entry on woodwind and pizzicato strings – but so discreetly that the piano can pretend not to notice, devoting its attention instead to a particularly attractive solo presentation of a melody derived from the drooping theme. It is only after another confrontation of aggression from the orchestra and quiet words from the piano that the soloist at last picks up the melodic hint offered by woodwind and pizzicato strings and introduces it, in its definitive form in F sharp minor, as the main theme of the work.

Even now, after five minutes of introduction, the newly announced main theme is by no means the only source of melodic interest in the following six variations. It certainly predominates to begin with, as piano and orchestra exchange short phrases from it in the first variation, as violas and cellos present an expressive version of it below a decorative piano counterpoint in the second, and as the piano plays capriciously with it in the third variation. But in the fourth the aggressive gesture from the opening bars reappear, triumphantly transformed in a brassy D major. The main theme finds its way back in, however, as the dynamic level drops and once again, in the the slower fifth variation, the cellos ruminate on it below F sharp minor harmonies on the piano. The texture of the sixth variation is much the same but rarified in a diaphanous ppp with the lower strings now turning their thoughtful attention to the drooping theme from the introduction.

It is a timely reminder because, after prolonged trills on the piano and an acceleration in the tempo, it is that theme which, suddenly more sprightly than droopy, leads the way through the finale in a joyful F sharp major. The distiinctive rhythm here is said to derive from the cramignon, a folk dance from Liège, where Franck was born and spent thirteen years before moving to Paris.