Ernst von Dohnányi
(1877-1960)
Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Song, written, said the composer ‘for the enjoyment of humorous people and the annoyance of others’ has been well described as an elaborate but very good joke. It is full of the humour which was a feature of his music and of his own brilliant piano playing. He himself gave the first performance in Berlin in 1916, and his 1931 recording remains one of the wittiest and best.
The nursery song which Dohnányi takes as his theme, sung in France to the words ‘Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman’, and in England as ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’ had been used by Mozart for a set of 12 variations for solo piano. Its blameless simplicity conceals vast possibilities for imaginative transformation of its simple moves up and down the scale, between tonic and dominant. Knowing that Mozart’s piece is often given to very young pianists, Dohnányi addresses himself to grown-ups (and musically aware children), who will appreciate references to a vast range of musical styles, many touched on with comedy or irony, but all remaining beautiful and enjoyable, and giving the soloist opportunities for expression and coruscating virtuosity.
The biggest joke is the beginning. The portentous orchestral prelude, described by Sir Donald Tovey as a ‘symphony in Woe minor’, contains minor key treatments of the first eight notes of the theme. It dies away in tragic accents, there is a sudden bang, and the piano comes in all innocently, picking out the theme in unison as if a child was playing it.
The ‘disguise’ of variations helps make this Dohnányi’s most popular work. A major pianist, one of the greatest of his time, he was famous for the range of his repertoire. Soon after completing the Variations, Dohnányi left Berlin, where he had been invited by Joachim in 1905, and returned to his native Hungary, continuing his versatile life as pianist, composer, conductor, teacher, and administrator – the major architect, as Grove’s Dictionary observes, of Hungary’s musical culture in the 20th century. Conducting left less time for composing, and clearly Dohnányi already had a conductor’s sympathy for a wide range of styles. His own music was basically a continuation of Romanticism. As these Variations show, Dohnányi was well aware of modern stylistic developments, but his harmonic adventures were always anchored in clear form and firm tonality.
Variation by Variation
Introduction
Theme
Variation: I the theme migrates to plucked strings, while the piano makes its first declaration of virtuosity.
II a brass-dominated march, with skittish interludes for piano and winds.
III a tongue-in cheek dance, Romantic and Brahmsian.
IV march-like again, and comic in its accompaniment, for very high and very low woodwinds.
V ‘like a music box’ – piano, harp and bells.
VI the same figuration carries on, with lively winds.
VII Waltz – a parodistic, schmaltzy treatment of this Viennese dance.
VIII Alla marcia, with shades of Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, and Mahler’s irony.
IX A scherzo, which salutes Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice (bassoons) and Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre (xylophone and rapping of the violins’ bow-sticks on the strings).
X Passacaglia. Opening in reminiscence of César Franck’s Symphonic variations, this turns into a solemn slow dance on a ground-bass (Passacaglia), which is the theme in minor mode. The affecting emotional core of the work.
XI Chorale. The nursery tune, handled with a debt to the Evening Prayer and Dream Pantomime of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, with harp and piano figuration interspersing the brass’s intoning of the hymn. Harmony based on the whole tone scale pokes fun at Debussy, and leads incongruously to a naïve and witty transition - playing with the simple musical materials of the theme, then:
Finale fugato. The theme of this fugal chase has incongruous intervals, and the spirit is that of Rossini. The ending includes a jibe at Lisztian pyrotechnics and a Haydnish joke for high and low winds.
First published for ABC Concerts/Symphony Australia