Symphonic Variations (Franck)
composition by César Franck
The Symphonic Variations (Variations symphoniques), M. 46, is a work for piano and orchestra written in 1885 by César Franck. It has been described as "one of Franck's tightest and most finished works", "a superb blending of piano and orchestra", and "a flawless work and as near perfection as a human composer can hope to get in a work of this nature". It is a fine example of Franck's use of cyclic unity, with one theme growing into various others. The piano and orchestra share equally in the development of ideas. The work is in F♯ minor (with the last movement in F♯ major). Duration in performance is about fifteen minutes, and the instrumentation is piano solo and orchestra: pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons; four horns; two trumpets; timpani; and strings.
History
The work was dedicated to Louis Diémer, who on 15 March 1885 had premiered Les Djinns, a symphonic poem for piano and orchestra that brought Franck one of his rare critical successes. He promised to reward Diémer with "a little something", and the similarly scored Symphonic Variations was the result. Franck started work in the summer of 1885, and completed the piece on 12 December.
Premiere
The premiere on 1 May 1886, at the annual orchestral concert of the Société Nationale de Musique, went almost unnoticed.
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This entry incorporates text from “Symphonic Variations (Franck)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.