brahms’ handel or handel’s brahms?

© Tilman Skowroneck 2011

In anticipation of Murray Perahia’s new CD with Brahms’ Handel Variations, which I ordered minutes ago, a few thoughts about the tangles of performance practice in this work are in order.

These magnificent variations are based on an aria from Handel’s first keyboard suite in B-flat Major. Although Brahms – as we read in the article I linked to above – drew his inspiration mainly from the bass, the theme, with all its added and omitted twiddles, is Handel’s own. Now, how does the pianist have to approach these eight bars of Early Music?

roman: flute sonatas and a swedish mass

In her new two-CD set Johann Helmich Roman’s flute sonatas (Caprice 2007; CAP 22060), flutist Maria Bania provides a well-written short biography of this “father of Swedish music”. Stockholm-born Roman (1694-1758), a talented violinist, was in London between 1716 and 1721 and played in Handel’s orchestras (the King’s Theatre and later the Royal Academy). Thus he participated at at least seven of Handel’s operas; “operas at the highest European level and with the most eminent singers of his time.” Unsurprisingly, “it was a reluctant Roman who returned to a Stockholm that had neither opera house nor public concerts.”

I have sympathy for the man.