Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

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Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is a piece of classical music for orchestra and solo piano by Sergei Rachmaninoff. According to the score, the work was written from July 3 to August 18 1934. The piece is in the key of A minor and is Rachmaninoff's opus 43.

1 Overview
2 18th variation ('Andante cantabile')
3 Structure
4 External links

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Overview

The piece is a set of 24 variations on the twenty-fourth and last of Niccolo Paganini's Caprices for solo violin. Several other sets of variations on this theme have been written, including pieces by Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Witold Lutosławski and Paganini himself.

Although Rachmaninoff's work is performed in one stretch with no breaks, it can be divided into three sections, corresponding to the three movements of a concerto: up to variation 11 corresponds to the first movement, variations 12 to 18 are the equivalent of a slow movement (with variations 14 and 15 as a sort of scherzo-interlude), and the remaining variations make a finale. Unusually, the first variation comes before the theme.

The piece is one of several by Rachmaninoff to quote the Dies Irae plainchant melody (it has been suggested that this is a reference to the legend that Paganini sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his violin-playing skills and the love of a woman).

Rachmaninoff himself, a noted interpreter of his own works, played the solo piano part at the piece's premiere at the Lyric Opera House in Baltimore, Maryland on November 7 1934. He was accompanied by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

In collaboration with Rachmaninoff, the choreographer Michel Fokine created the ballet Paganini using this piece as the score. It was premiered in 1939 at Covent Garden in England.

The theme itself would continue to inspire composers after Rachmaninoff such as Lutosławski and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Rachmaninov's first "game" is to place the theme - on strings with the piano picking out alient notes - after the first variation. And that initial variation - on pizzicato strings following a general clearing of throats for orchestra and piano - is itself something of a game, since it makes a pun with the finale of Beethoven's Eroica symphony (which itself introduces a skeletal version before the actual theme). Now that the work is properly underway, Variations II to VI start to split the elements of the theme apart and to recombine them into new musical personalities. The pauses and rhetorical flourishes for the piano in variation VI herald a change of tempo and tone. Next the piano gravely intones the head-motif of the Dies Irae - the medieval "day of wrath" plainchant from the Mass of the Dead - while the orchestra accompanies with the opening motif of the Paganini theme. The Dies Irae was a favourite of Rachmaninov's, and its apocalyptic associations are by no means irrelevant here. Still, the combination of ideas is a kind of musical game, and one that will be played out later in the rhapsody.

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18th variation ('Andante cantabile')

The slow eighteenth variation is by far the most well-known, and it is often included on compilation CDs or records on its own, without the rest of the work.

Interestingly, this variation on first listening does not appear to contain the original theme. Rachmaninoff inverted the melody to obtain the theme for this variation.

This variation has been featured in several movies, including: