Chaconne, Op.32

Unlike the other composers represented in this programme, Nielsen was not much of a pianist and did not specialise in piano music. It is partly because of the lack of a ready facility in the piano writing, however, that his major piano piece, the Chaconne, has its own, thoroughly distinctive sound. Alexander Stoffregen, the pianist who gave the first performance of the work, was so aware of its individuality in this respect, and so uncomfortable with it, that he revised the score to bring it more into line with the Lisztian tradition with which he was familiar. As Nielsen realised, but only after they were incorporated in the first edition, Stoffregen’s revisions were not as helpful as they were intended to be.

The distinctive sound of the Chaconne derives also of course from the uncompromising personality of the composer - 1916 was also the year of the “Inextinguishable” Fourth Symphony - and from the oddly archaic nature of the D minor material on which it is based. Introduced by the left hand alone in the opening bars, Nielsen’s austere theme gives rise first to a kind of two-part invention and gradually, over the course of nineteen more variations, develops more and more textural and expressive interest. Moving to begin with at unpredictable tangents, the cycle achieves a broader continuity in the sixteenth and seventeenth variations which, in powerful presence of the theme in the left hand and the vigorously dissonant figuration in the right, mark the climax of the construction. The progress from there to the serene D major ending, with an expressive melodic line radiantly coloured by runs in the other hand, is most imaginatively realised.

According to Leif Ove Andsnes, Nielsen’s Chaconne “stands happily alongside the greatest piano works of our time.”