1931 AARON COPLAND plays PIANO VARIATIONS / Nocturne w JACQUES GORDON Violin 78

$

50

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A series of great Violin, Piano and Orchestra records on rare labels, from 1902 Monarch to 1940 War Germany recordings.

CREATOR RECORD: AARON COPLAND plays

AARON COPLAND PIANO VARIATIONS on three sides /

AARON COPLAND  Nocturne w JACQUES GORDON Violin , AARON COPLAND PIANO

Recorded shortly after the public premiere in 1931

The Piano Variations were first performed on January 4, 1931, by the composer, at a League of Composers concert in New York. The tenor of the newspaper reviews may be gauged from this one, in the New York Herald Tribune:
Mr. Copland, always a composer of radical tendencies, has in these variations sardonically thumbed his nose at all of those esthetic attributes which have hitherto been considered essential to the creation of music.

 Condition: EXCELLENT, rare scuffs, rare faintest scratches, two lightest scratches on 1. All labels are in bad condition, dark with dull sports, Nocturne label damaged

Plays very quiet w rare ticks faintest crackle

US VIVA TONAL 2x12" 78 rpm record

Piano Variations (1930)
As already suggested, the Piano Variations constituted a turning point in Copland's career. In Lipman's words,
they were short, dissonant, hard in sound, dry, and difficult. They shared certain features with Schoenbergian serialism, but where Schoenberg was passionately warm, Copland was passionately cold; where Schoenberg's writing was wilfully luxuriant, Copland's was painfully lean.
Discussing the work as an example of variation form, Copland has pointed out that it
reverses the usual procedure by putting the simplest version of the theme second, naming “theme” what is, properly speaking, a first variation. The idea was to present the listener with a more striking version of the theme first, which seemed more in keeping with the generally dramatic character of the composition as a whole.
In this “more striking version” the theme has five phrases, each punctuated by a sharp chord. It appears brutal and jagged, with abrupt leaps. In the next version—the actual theme—the leaps have been ironed out into a smooth line. Characteristic intervals of major sevenths and minor ninths come more to the fore in Variation 2, with the theme dissonantly harmonized against a permutation of its own pitches. In Variation 3, the register, heretofore predominantly in the piano's throaty treble and deep bass, moves up toward the glassy top, and a dotted rhythm is introduced.
Variations 4 and 5 feature a strongly accented rhythmic motive, and move more slowly. But this tendency is contradicted in the sixth variation, a “clangorous” transformation that places the theme in the treble range with dissonant notes alternating above and below it, each phrase punctuated by a scurrying diminution in the bass. The hastening continues in Variations 8 and 9, piling up imitations and inversions to the proclamatory tenth variation, at the end of which the characteristic rhythm of Variation 4 returns.
Now there is a moment of repose, two-part counterpoint over soft chords in the bass, Lento. Variations 12-18 have a scherzando (playful) character, with jumpy rhythms and the theme's notes scattered all over the keyboard. After a brief respite at the start of Variation 19, the forward momentum resumes, the final (twentieth) variation working up a frenzy of jerky rhythmic irregularity that rivals the “Danse Sacrale” of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. This eventually descends to the bottom of the keyboard and evaporates. In the first part of the Coda, that rhythm from Variation 4 returns once more, and the peroration presents the theme in a stark but grandiose manner that recalls elements of the early variations.
The Piano Variations were first performed on January 4, 1931, by the composer, at a League of Composers concert in New York. The tenor of the newspaper reviews may be gauged from this one, in the New York Herald Tribune:
Mr. Copland, always a composer of radical tendencies, has in these variations sardonically thumbed his nose at all of those esthetic attributes which have hitherto been considered essential to the creation of music.
But among musicians and such thoughtful critics as Paul Rosenfeld, the piece made a lasting impression—as indicated by its repetition in April, 1932, at the First Festival of Contemporary American Music at Yaddo, and the following year at the International Society of Contemporary Music's festival in Amsterdam. In 1932 Martha Graham based a 6 dance work, Dithyrambic, on it. The composer’s orchestral version was first performed in 1956 by the Louisville Orchestra, Robert Whitney conducting.

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