Ferdinand Ries - Variations over Swedish National Airs, Op. 52 (1813)

Ferdinand Ries (28 November 1784 [baptised] – 13 January 1838) was a German composer. Ries was a friend, pupil and secretary of Ludwig van Beethoven. He composed eight symphonies, a violin concerto, eight piano concertos, three operas, and numerous other works in many genres, including 26 string quartets. In 1838 he published a collection of reminiscences of his teacher Beethoven, co-written with Franz Wegeler. The symphonies, some chamber works —most of them with piano— his violin concerto and his piano concertos have been recorded, demonstrating a style which is, unsurprising due to his connection to Beethoven, somewhere between those of the Classical and early Romantic eras. Airs nationaux suedois avec variations, Op. 52. Stockholm, 1813 Dedicated to the Duke of Sussex Christopher Hinterhuber, piano and Gävle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Uwe Grodd For fun I added a review of 1815 by The European Magazine, and London Review. Swedish National Airs, with Variations for the piano-forte by Ferdinand Ries The title of this work would naturally lead us to conjecture that it is not of a studied or elaborate nature; the contrary, however, is the fact; and we doubt that the limits of our page will not permit a thorough and minute investigation of the pieces before us. The introduction of the first air begins with a slow movement Largo molto, interspersed with abundant roulades ad libitum. When the direction “a tempo“ is announced; the author has made use of J.B. Cramer’s passage in semiquavers for three bars remaining in the base which constitutes his 35th Exercise in the second book. The first air entitled “a cradle song“ has nothing very attractive, being a monotonous kind of melody. The variations, however, are sufficiently complicated and require a very masterly command of the instrument to execute. The Larghetto is difficult and abstruse in the extreme, and appears to be next to impossible to perform in just time, so uncommonly irregular and various are the divisions of the measure: indeed the curiosity of the construction of this movement is its chief, or rather only, merit, as there is not one single bar of good melody in the two pages which it occupies. After this we are presented with an Allegretto movement entitled “Skansk Bond Dans“ in triple measure: a poor melody, but rather less monotonous, as it passes from its minor key of C into the major E-flat in the second part of the tune. .... ..... The last of these Swedish rarities is “The Miller’s Dance“ consisting of very confined descant of only eighth bars, but rather of a pleasing cast, though totally old and hackneyed, characteristic of no national style whatsoever, and might as well be called a Yorkshire or Devonshire Air, as to any novelty or impressive feature it contains. Upon these paltry bars also the author exhausts tremendous vollies of semiquavers, and a chain of mountainous passages occurs, sufficient to turn the performer’s head giddy even before any manuel attempt to scale them. The ultimate modulation into the major of C produces a lively effect: but we cannot help acknowledging (upon the whole) considerable disappointment in this work of Mr. Ries, whom, as he is known to be a perfect master of his art, we expected to have given in these variations something very different and very superior to a dense congeries of crowded and crude difficulties, without an atom for such an unmerciful siege to our ears in a single phrase of elegant taste or affecting harmony. It is but too true that the zeal for attempting impossibilities has of late gained a desperate and fatal ground among pianists; and the excellence of the composition is estimated, not by beautiful melody united with touching harmony, but by an electric current of unmeaning notes. If this bad taste not be speedily checked, piano-forte music will be entirely alienated from the grand purpose of all music, those of delighting the ear, and affecting the heart, and will remain only an exploit of dexterity to amuse and astonish the eye, and its dignity being reduced to deserve only the same degree of esteem which we cherish for the vaulting of a tumbler, or the tricks of an adept in legerdemain.