Introductory text of the sheet music edition (Musikverlag Zimmermann Frankfurt)

The ballet "The Millions of the Harlequin" by the composer Riccardo Drigo (1846-1930) was premiered in 1900 and was an immediate success. The serenade from this work in particular enjoys great popularity to this day and has been published by Zimmermann in numerous arrangements. It is therefore linked to the history of our company like no other publishing work.

This was the reason for us to ask our authors to compose variations on the serenade on the occasion of our 125th birthday. Many of them responded to this request with great pleasure*, and the works were premiered on 7 September 2001, the day of the publishing house's anniversary.

Bertold Hummel is by no means an unknown composer. He is mainly associated with our company through his brilliantly effective percussion works. For the anniversary, he has come up with his very own variation for oboe solo, which consists exclusively of notes that also appear in the piano version (the serenade) that serves as the model. Hummel breaks up Drigo's melody, which is repeated again and again, with surprising stops and cadential interjections. Here, too, the mischievous gestures suggesting a harlequin cannot be ignored, which contrast beautifully with the lyrical elements of the paraphrase - a musical genre popular in the 19th century and widespread in the salons, the aim of which was to deal with well-known themes from popular opera music.

* Robert Delanoff, Jindrich Feld, Werner Heider, Bertold Hummel, Frank Michael, Wil Offermans, Ivan Shekov, Graham Waterhouse, Klaus Wüsthoff, Ruth Zechlin and Krzysztof Zgraja