Lyadov: Glinka Variations (1894) -- technique of Chopin

Lyadov was the specialty of my wife. She recommends me to play Barcarolle Op.44. Yes, I liked it very much. Still, I decided to continue my tries on variations. My first intention was to study "Variations on a Polish Folk Theme" Op. 51, which is shorter. The reason of choosing "Variations on a theme by Glinka" Op.35 is that it was composed in 1894, which was an epic year of Faure's piano music. I would try to collect 1894-1895 works and study them along with Faure's Variations and other works.

This variation is composed of a theme of B-flat major and 13 variations including an ossia (var. 7b). The theme is peaceful with a length of 23 bars. The middle section of the theme has a shadow of g minor, and the code transition to it is B-flat, C/E, D7, g. Here E bass always sounds interesting in the following variations. The last 6 bars of the theme are closing. These bars often add peculiar technical pianistic turns in the variations while sometimes they sound lengthy or off focus when played badly as I experienced. I thought about omitting 7b for the sake of brevity, but could not resist playing it for the nice melodic variation, instead I set a faster tempo in var. 7, which might sounds like Chopin's Prelude #14 (e-flat minor).

These variations technically have much in common with Tchaikovsky's Op. 19-6, and also Chopin's Etudes/Preludes; broad arpeggios (Var. 6), 6ths (Var. 8), clean pedaling (Var. 10), and so on. I have never studied these with such a pure form and var. 6 is a disaster. Var. 8 is reasonably bad and saved by the change of pace in the closing. Var. 10 is simply not clean enough in spite of my choice of a slow tempo.

The point of my performance, in my opinion, is the sense of fragility or naiveness. Var. 2 (Mazurka) and slow variations (Vars. 4, 7b, 9, 11) should be OK. I got a little bold in the finale. It is a great success if you laugh out loud and become happy facing unexpected bursts in the coda.

I memorized it and recorded it with one session and this might be an accomplishment.

Instrument: Yamaha C5X