Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 09/03/2014, uploaded on 09/03/2014

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The Variations Sérieuses were Mendelssohn’s first attempt at a piano piece in this genre, and he seems to have done so in a flurry of inspiration; indeed, the only two subsequent variation sets Mendelssohn wrote followed quickly afterward. The “sérieuses” of its title was meant to differentiate the work from most of his contemporaries’ variation sets, many of which were based on favorite opera arias and were as vapid as they were popular. Mendelssohn achieves seriousness, piousness even, through a reliance on Classical and Baroque textures, from the chorale-like theme to the fugato of variation ten, all the way through to the restrained plagal cadence that abruptly quiets the tempestuous finale.       Evan Mitchell

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.