Variations on a Theme of Corelli

Rachmaninov’s Corelli Variations are the recital pianist’s equivalent of the same composer’s Paganini Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. The first solo piano work he had completed in fifteen years - and, in fact, his last work of that kind - the Corelli Variations were written only two years before the Paganini Rhapsody, in 1932. As in the later work, he took a theme used by many composer before him and treated it with the irresistible mixture of romantic sentiment and neo-classical wit so characteristic of Rachmaninov at that time. Indeed, admirers of the Paganini Rhapsody will hear many similarities between the two works in the rhythmic figurations applied to the theme in the quicker variations. While there is nothing in the Corelli set quite like the famous eighteenth variation of the Paganini rhapsody, one might detect an exquisite anticipation of it in the fifteenth of these (in the same key of D flat major) and there is a similar relationship between the delicately suggestive sixteenth Paganini variation and the Adagio misterioso eighth Corelli variation.

The theme - a traditional dance melody of considerable antiquity known as “La Folia” - is presented by Rachmaninov as Corelli uses it in the Variations sérieuses of his twelfth Violin Sonata. Although it has an attractively ceremonial quality about it, a kind of courtly seriousness, it is not very interesting melodically. Rachmaninov offers one variation which reshapes the melody slightly, setting it in his own wayward sort of harmonies, but after that he is concerned not so much with the melodic outline of “La Folia” as with the rhythmic surprises he can spring on it, the incongruously playful or even violent keyboard techniques he can apply to it, or the poetry he can find in it.

The finest inspiration of the work has nothing to do with the quality of “La Folia.” The first thirteen variations (or eleven if the performer omits the ones the composer marks in the score as optional) are all, like the theme itself, in D minor. He then inserts an Intermezzo which has the innocently outward appearance of a cadenza but which has the actual effect of changing the prevailing D minor to an alien D flat major - in which key he very surprisingly re-introduces theme in its original Andante tempo and in something like its original melodic shape. The lovely fifteenth variation then takes full advantage of the new harmonic situation before the tonality reverts to D minor for the last five (or four if a shorter version is used).

These last variations are even more imaginative than their predecessors - above all the one with the guitar-like strummed accompaniment which refuses to take the changing metres into account - and they apparently come to a powerfully dramatic conclusion on pounding octaves at the bottom end of the keyboard. But Rachmaninov has one more surprise, which is a gently reflective coda finally dying away on a faint echo of “La Folia.”