Sergey Rachmaninov
(1873-1943)
The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, composed in 1934, is one of Rachmaninov’s most popular works. The clear shape of the theme, from Paganini’s vilolin Caprice in A minor, heip Rachmaninov to control procedures which elsewhere had often become rather ramblingly improvisatory. The result is a taut structure in which the variations on the theme can roughly be divided into three sections, as Geoffery Norris and other writers have pointed out variations 1-10 (for the most part quick); 11-18 (predominantly slow); and 19-24 (lively throughout). These sections coincide loosely with the three movements of a concerto. The basic outline of the theme in the first variation precedes the theme itself. Rachmaninov has perceived that it bears a resemblance to the Dies Irae, which dominates variations 7-10 and plays an important role later as well. The florid variation 11, with its cadenza-like passages, effects a modulation from the key hitherto largely employed. A minor to D minor for the next two variations, then to F major and, in variation 18 (the culmination of the middle section), to D flat major for one of the most delectably lyrical of all Rachmaninov’s melodies, ingeniously based on a free inversion of Paganini’s theme. From variation 19 (again in A minor) the rhythmic impetus and tempo gradually increase until the final, twenty-fourth variation, in which the Dies Irae is portentously restated in the course of a dramatic peroration, capped by a whimsically soft snippet of the theme.
It is because this series of variations is constructed with such exquisite care, and encapsulates such a wide variety of moods and of moods and of melodies cleverly derived from Paganini’s original, that it is generally considered to be Rachmaninov’s greatest concerted work. And it is no mean feat to have matched the achievement of earlier composers who wrote variations on the same theme, most notably Brahms.
