| The Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel is one of the most outstanding variations in Brahms’ s musical composition,with a huge structure,focusing on Brahms’ s comprehensive mastery of variations and piano playing techniques,creating an elegant and solemn atmosphere,reflecting his unique artistic characteristics.It is known as one of the three outstanding variations in the history of Western piano art,together with Bach’s Gothenburg Variations and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations.Due to the large size of the work,the author only focuses on the variation part in this paper,and does not cover the fugue part of the work.The author mainly selects the audio and video versions of Opitz,Bronfman and Zhang Haochen to start the comparison.Although the recording periods of the three versions are relatively close,the author believes that the interpretations of all three have distinctive personalities and unique stylistic characteristics,so they are taken as the objects of study.The first chapter focuses on the background of the composition of the work,and the musical analysis of the variations according to the structure of the work.Chapter 2compares the three pianists’ treatment of tempo,revealing the local homogeneity and overall difference of tempo layout in macrocosm;in microcosm,it reveals that Opitz’s performance has strong gradation and natural transition within the phrase,Bronfman’s performance has certain exaggerated effect of note time value expansion,and Zhang Haochen’s performance has smooth and balanced characteristics.The third chapter compares the intensity of the three pianists,revealing the local homogeneity and overall difference of the intensity layout in macrocosm,and the balanced intensity control of Zhang Haochen in the phrases,the layered and dynamic intensity of Opitz,and the delicate and gradual intensity of Bronfman,with strong lyrical color.In the fourth chapter,the common features and individual characteristics of the three pianists in their performance gestures are discussed.All three pianists have certain commonalities in their sitting posture,facial expressions used to convey emotions and body movements during performance,while their performance gestures have unique individual characteristics in terms of mobilization of body movements and interpretation of accents.Through the above-mentioned comparative understanding by means of visual research,the author further divided the three pianists’ performance styles and finally selected Opitz’s performance style as being closer to Brahms’ musical style and aesthetic pursuit. |
