Russian Folk Song

Beethoven's Op. 107 sits at an odd corner of his catalogue — a set of folk-air variations written for the Edinburgh publisher George Thomson, originally for voice with piano-trio accompaniment. The Grade 1 entry is a keyboard reduction of the third air, a Russian folk tune that Beethoven also reused in the second of his Razumovsky string quartets (Op. 59 no. 2). What reaches the student is a small, modally-coloured tune that opens a door onto Beethoven's wider output without making excessive technical demands.

The piece is in A minor and stays in a five-finger position for the most part. The right hand carries a stepwise melody with a clear two-bar phrasing; the left hand provides bare-fifth and tonic-dominant support. The ear test here is harmonic colour — A minor with the occasional raised seventh — rather than finger speed. Voicing matters: the right hand should be clearly above the left, and the left should never thump on its open fifths.

The principal pitfall is letting the dynamic stay flat at mp throughout. The melody has a small rise and fall across each phrase, and Heumann's edition marks it; Grade 1 candidates often miss it under exam pressure. A second pitfall is rushing the cadences — the piece resolves cleanly and should be allowed to land, not shrugged off into the next phrase.

The full Op. 107 is on IMSLP in its original voice-and-trio scoring; hearing the Russian air sung makes the keyboard arrangement breathe more naturally.