Clare Hammond: Variations
BIS

In Clare Hammond's own estimation, the variation concept is “a simple one,” with the pianist citing Grove Music's description of it as a form rooted in repetition and involving a theme subjected to modifications. Yet while she concedes that such a state of affairs might not appear particularly inspiring, composers have found endless ways to produce fascinating results whilst working within the form's seeming limitations. No more evidence is needed than the material on her fifth BIS release, a stimulating collection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century pieces by Sofia Gubaidulina, John Adams, Aaron Copland, and others. No concession is made to the listener who likes her Birtwistle leavened with Brahms, though in a few cases works are based on earlier themes, Helmut Lachenmann's on one by Schubert, for example.

As demanded by the material, Hammond's playing is virtuosic and poised. The Cambridge University graduate has received repeated acclaim for the authority of her playing and the conviction she brings to the works she performs. Without exception, each one on this set meets that high bar, and any contemporary composer would, one imagines, be thrilled at the prospect of a Hammond interpretation. Adding to the release's appeal are detailed liner notes written by the pianist that illuminate each of the works performed.

The scene-setting Variations on a Polish Theme, Op. 10 (1904), written by Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) in his final year as a student at the Warsaw Conservatory, is at nineteen minutes the longest and most elaborate of the seven selections. Hammond follows a tender and exquisitely rendered opening statement with ten variations, some urgent and declamatory and others delicate and lyrical; regardless of differences, all benefit from Hammond's exceptional musicality. The pianist names Richard Strauss, César Franck, and Modest Mussorgsky (specifically Pictures from an Exhibition) as influences, yet while that might be so they're subsumed into Szymanowski's conception and Romantic sensibility. Catching the ear in particular is the eighth variation, “Marcia funebre,” for its dark chords and overall drama (it was, in fact, performed at Szymanowski's own funeral more than thirty years later), though the bravura finale registers powerfully too.

5 Variations on a Theme of Franz Schubert (1956) by Lachenmann (b. 1935) likewise follows its graceful opening statement with irreverent treatments, the first spiritedly expanding on Schubert's theme and the second restrained yet nevertheless haunting. Frenzied passages alternate with those of a more controlled and dignified bearing, with each retaining a discernible tie, however seemingly tangential, to the originating theme. The respective pieces by Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) and Adams (b. 1947) offer fascinating comparison studies, given that Variations from the Golden Mountain (2014) and I Still Play (2017) were both conceived as tributes to Bach's Goldberg Variations. Whereas Birtwistle's largely presents his as an austere, mysterious elegy, Adams wrote his—a tonally shifting, serpentine waltz in a style the composer himself calls “Satie meets Bill Evans”—with the idea that it should be able to be played by a skilled amateur.

1930's Piano Variations isn't the Copland (1900-90) of the audience-pleasing Rodeo but instead an uncompromising examination of, in this rendering, twelve minutes' duration, what Hammond deems “perhaps the most monolithic set of variations of the twentieth century.” The work had a polarizing effect when premiered, with pianist Walter Gieseking rejecting the work because of its “crude dissonances” and “severity of style”; Leonard Bernstein, on the other hand, judged it “prophetic” and a “synonym of modern music.” Admittedly, there is a stark, elemental coldness to the piece, yet however off-putting it might have been ninety years ago, its application of serial techniques and other treatments (Hammond lists transposition, inversion, and diminution, among others) sounds less alien to modern ears.

March 2021