252. Baroque Inspirations

The Concert - Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Works for piano by Handel and Brahms performed by Charlie Albright, piano on October 2, 2016.

• Handel: Chaconne in G Major, HWV. 435
• Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op. 24

This podcast starts with the Baroque composer George Frideric Handel, in more ways than one.

The first work on the podcast is, indeed, by Handel: his Chaconne in G Major, a set of about 20 very brief variations, each built on a recurring eight-bar bass line.

Following that, we have another set of variations on a theme by Handel, this time written by another composer: Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Opus 24. This piano piece has a distinctly Romantic sensibility, but Brahms clearly delighted in uncovering and augmenting the many musical possibilities present in Handel’s fairly simple theme.

When Brahms published the piece in in 1860s, it stood apart from the musical explorations of contemporaries like Wagner and Liszt; it seemed much more related to composers who came before—a homage, perhaps, to Bach’s famous Goldberg Variations or Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations.

We’ll hear both works—Handel’s Chaconne, and Brahms’ Variations on Handel—performed by pianist Charlie Albright.