Variations

Webern completed Variations, Op. 30, his last orchestral work, in 1940. His native Austria was now Nazi-controlled, with performances of his supposedly “degenerate” music banned there. Even so, in the Variations he managed to create one of his finest works. The music’s closely worked chromatic modernism has an attractively deft and playful streak. It also has an expansive manner—by Webern’s concentrated standards at least—that seems to look ahead to a possible opera project he spoke of, shortly before his death in 1945. The music’s continuous eight-minute sequence has the design of an introduction, principal theme—announced first by a solo violin, then the full violin section—and five variations. There is also a parallel feeling of a traditional three-part form, with the last and longest of the variations resembling a broader reprise of the opening. Webern was able to travel to the premiere of the Variations in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. It was to be the last time he heard his music performed.