Air varié No.1, Op.13
Violin and Piano
In brief

This Air varié has a salon-like yet taut character, alternating singing phrases with brisk episodes that require precise articulation and a refined sense of color rather than expansive heroics. Technically, you will need to focus on the Passages rapides (4.0/5) — here that means rapid position changes and very tight left-hand coordination with short bow strokes — and on Contrôle du toucher (3.5/5), which requires modulating bow pressure and speed to maintain a singing legato in lyrical sections while keeping the rapid figures clear. The piece is listed as Op.13 in the composer's catalogue but its period of composition is marked as unknown, so it stands as an item whose exact place in his output is not firmly established. I do not provide a reference recording because I do not have a reliably identified, widely recognized interpretation for this specific Air varié.

Listen to this work

No verified recording for this work yet. We add more every week.

Sheet music

Public-domain sheet music on IMSLP ↗

Is this the right work?
Formation

Violin and piano · 2 performers

Required forces
Violin 1 performers
Piano 1 performers
Playable parts
Violin Piano
MusicCoach difficulty
46/100
Intermediate
Likely range : 34–58/100
Confidence : 30% · to confirm
BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedVirtuoso
Exam grade
About grade 5

Estimated from our difficulty score, not taken from an exam syllabus. Checked against 333 works on the ABRSM syllabus: the exact grade is right 7 times out of 10, and within one grade 99 times out of 100.

Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.

Where this work sits
050100

Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.

The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.

Does this rating look right to you?

This rating is computed automatically from heterogeneous sources. It gets things wrong, sometimes badly. If you know this work, your answer is worth more than our computation: it tells us which ratings to review.

Add a note (optional)

Your note is not published on the site: it is read in review.

Relative difficulty
17%
Among August Casorti
38%
Era
Genre
Estimated skills
Technique
Fast passages
2
Technique
Legato
1
Interpretation
Dynamics
1
Interpretation
Phrasing
2
Style
Romantic style
1
What to play next?

Each suggestion combines difficulty gap, risk, confidence and skill overlap. The first two cards in each column are the most useful pedagogically.

See the whole progression