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This Third Sonata, like its two predecessors, also offers a framework
for exploring the writing of variations – a technique which occupies
a central place in Brahms’s œuvre as a whole, and is the specific
object of five complete compositions among the piano works alone.
The first of these is the Variations on a Theme of Schumann (op.9, 1854),
dedicated to Clara for the birth in June 1854 of Felix, the son Schumann
would never know and to whom Brahms stood godfather. A few months
earlier, Robert had been struck down by the illness that would lead to his
confinement in a sanatorium until his death two and a half years later. In
her personal diary, Clara wrote: ‘He sought to comfort me. He composed
variations on that wonderfully heartfelt theme that means so much to me,
just as last year when I composed variations on this theme by my beloved
Robert, and moved me deeply through his sweet concern.’
These ‘Variations on a Theme by Him, dedicated to Her’ do indeed radiate
a tenderness that is sometimes passionate, always astonishing; yet the
heart pours forthwith a compositional freedom that is admirably controlled
(notably with changes of key unprecedented in this form). Drawing on the
profound artistic and emotional inspiration that the Schumann couple
represented for him, this initial set of variations was to open the door to a
veritable laboratory for Brahms’s musical idiom.
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GEOFFROY COUTEAU