The variation set form dates almost back to the dawn of independent instrumental music, and its original function was to allow a display of the performer's virtuosity. Yet very soon, its focus grew to include the composer's virtuosity as well, extracting new music from the same basic materials. The duality has persisted into the 20th and 21st centuries, with the performer-virtuoso function diminished but hardly gone. Pianist Clare Hammond presents an intelligent survey of the variation form since the early 20th century, ...
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The variation set form dates almost back to the dawn of independent instrumental music, and its original function was to allow a display of the performer's virtuosity. Yet very soon, its focus grew to include the composer's virtuosity as well, extracting new music from the same basic materials. The duality has persisted into the 20th and 21st centuries, with the performer-virtuoso function diminished but hardly gone. Pianist Clare Hammond presents an intelligent survey of the variation form since the early 20th century, hardly exhaustive but giving a sense of the various ways composers approached their task. There is one virtuoso work, the Variations on a Polish Folk Theme, Op. 10, by Karol Szymanowski, and here, Hammond is brilliant. She shifts gears completely in the angular, partly serial Piano Variations of Aaron Copland, which the booklet notes term "conspicuously un-'pianistic,'" and which emphasize the variation form's links to the 12-tone procedure. Along the way, there is humor in the Five...
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