Paganini Variations

Lutoslawski suffered the double misfortune of experiencing artistic repression under both the Nazi occupation of Poland – when the only form of public musical activity available to him was playing the piano in    Warsaw cafés – and the post-War Stalinist regime which banned his “formalistic” First Symphony in 1949. The Paganini Variations were written originally for the two-piano entertainments performed by Lutoslawski and another hightly promising Polish musician, Andrzey Panufnik, in their Warsaw café, where it was first heard in 1941. Not far short of 40 years later it was rescored for piano and orchestra at the request of the pianist Felicja Blumental, who played it for the first time in its new form with Brian Priestman and the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra in Miami in 1979.

Although the piano-and-orchestra version brought Lutoslawski’s Paganini Variations into the same area of the repertoire as Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody, it is closer in conception to the last of Liszt’s Paganini Studies in that, instead of presenting a series of new variations, it translates Paganini’s own variations into another medium. Needless to say – for anyone aware of the subsequent development of Lutoslawski’s highly distinctive creative personality – it sounds like neither Liszt nor Rachmaninov. It doesn’t sound like Paganini either: while it follows the precedent of the 24th Caprice fairly closely through all but the last of the eleven variations, it is brilliantly witty in subverting or even contradicting the harmonic implications of the solo-violin line of the original. While it offers no competition to Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody in emotional breadth or structural scale – it is less than half as long – it is no less resourcefully scored. Piano and orchestra regularly exchange roles halfway through each variation until the last, where the broad melodic interest passes from muted horn to upper strings. In the coda, which is quite different from Paganini’s Finale, the soloist’s near-literal recapitulation of the original theme is expanded in a climactic augmentation in most parts of the orchestra.

When Lutoslawski wrote his Paganini Variations, he wasn’t setting up in competition with Rachmaninov - or, indeed, with any of the composer-pianists who, from Schumann onwards, had been inspired to rethink the virtuosity of Paganini’s solo-violin Caprices in terms of their own instrument. In its original form it was different from the others in that it was scored neither for piano solo nor for piano and orchestra but for two pianos, to supplement the programmes of the unofficial concerts given by Lutoslawski and another highly promising Polish musician, Andrzey Panufnik, at the time of the German occupation of Poland during the War. First performed by the two young composers in Warsaw in 1941, it was rescored for piano and orchestra not far short of forty years later at the request of the pianist Felicja Blumental, who played it for the first time in its new form with Brian Priestman and the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra in Miami in 1979.

Although the piano-and-orchestra version brought Lutoslawski’s Paganini Variations into the same area of the repertoire as Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody, it is closer in conception to the last of Liszt’s Paganini Studies in that, instead of presenting a series of new variations, it translates Paganini’s own variations into another medium. Needless to say - for anyone aware of the development of Lutoslawski’s highly distinctive creative personality during the last fifty years - it sounds like neither Liszt nor Rachmaninov. It doesn’t sound like Paganini either: while it follows the precedent of the 24th Caprice fairly closely through all but the last of the eleven variations, it is brilliantly witty in subverting or even contradicting the harmonic implications of the solo-violin line of the original. While it offers no competition to Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody in emotional breadth or structural scale - it is less than half as long - it is no less resourcefully scored. Piano and orchestra regularly exchange roles halfway through each variation until the last, where the broad melodic interest passes from muted horn to upper strings. In the coda, which is quite different from Paganini’s Finale, the soloist’s near-literal recapitulation of the original theme is expanded in a climactic augmentation in most parts of the orchestra.