Lili Kraus plays Haydn Andante con Variazioni in F minor (1/2)

Part I
Josef Haydn (1732-1809):
Andante and Variations in F minor, Hob.17/6
Recorded in 1938
Lili Kraus (1903-1986), piano

Franz Josef Haydn composed his Andante con variazioni for piano in F minor in 1793. Although he composed the works with pianist Barbara von Ployer in mind, there is reason to believe that the work was secretly dedicated to another woman altogether, Marianne von Genzinger, the woman thought to be Haydn's last great love.
Genzinger was a fine pianist for whom he had already written the sublime Piano Sonata in E flat major, and his Andante con variazioni was composed shortly after Genzinger's death at 42 early in 1793.
In his last letter to her, Haydn had asked her to send "the final big Aria in F minor" from his tragic opera L'anima del filosofo (The Spirit of the Philosopher), his setting of the Orpheus myth. In the Andante con variazioni, Haydn takes as one of his themes a modified version of a phrase from the final Aria "Perduto un' altra volta," the aria in which the inconsolable Orpheus, having lost his Eurydice, yearns for death.
A set of double variations on a pair of themes alternating between Orpheus' theme in F minor and a consoling theme in F major, the Andante allows only two variations for each theme before the enormous and heartrending coda, a rhapsodic outpouring of grief and rage that ultimately collapses into a quiet, final leave-taking at the end.
Not only is the Andante con variazioni the deepest and most profound set of variations for piano composed between Bach and Beethoven, it is Haydn's greatest work for piano and one of the high points of his entire oeuvre. ~ All Music Guide

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Haydn
• Lili
• Kraus
• piano
• variations
• variazioni
• andante
• Hoboken
• 17/6

[soami2u]

Exquisite performance of these exquisitely beautiful variations.