Russian Variations

Works by Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, Rachmaninov, Field

Piers Lane (piano)

Hyperion CDA68428 80:36 mins Russian Variations is the title, but we start with a composer born in Ireland. Inventor of the piano Nocturne, John Field had a strong connection to Russia: he made St Petersburg his home in his twenties and he was buried in Moscow after his death in 1837.

His Variations on a Russian Folk Song – flowing, lyrical and tinged with aching melancholy, perfectly captured here by Piers Lane – make an excellent six-minute scene setter for this album.

After that we’re plunged into variations on a grander scale, with music by three of the big names of the Romantic era and early 20th century: Glazunov, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. With playing that’s never less than well-considered, gleaming and enjoyable, Lane is an excellent guide to these impassioned worlds – although at times, particularly in the Rachmaninov, there’s a sense of safety and polish that smooths off the edges.

Still, Lane keeps the spotlight on the composers, and it’s wonderful to see just what vivid and varied tapestries they could weave from a single thematic thread. Glazunov’s stark, sombre, possibly Finnish theme, with its falling third, transforms into cascading ripples, contrapuntal Baroque lines, a lilting pastoral gilded with bells in his Theme and Variations, Op. 72.

Tchaikovsky focuses less on traditional variation form and more on poetic character in his Six morceaux composés sur un seul thème, Op. 21, evoking Schumann and

Bach, and giving us a funeral march that meditates on grief, building up into a Dies Irae-inspired frenzy that needed a slightly wilder spirit from Lane. And to close, Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme of Chopin, which spins its C minor theme into a demanding half hour of pianistic challenges, navigated with seeming ease by Lane. Rebecca Franks PERFORMANCE

RECORDING