The Variations on a Theme by Handel are based on the Sarabande from Handel's Suite No. 11 in D Minor, a movement made famous by the 1975 motion picture Barry Lyndon by director Stanley Kubrick. Indeed, this superlative film, which brought to the screen a remarkably authentic interpretation of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), won an Oscar for its imaginative musical adaption of Handel's theme. This cinematic gem stimulated Ford to create four new variations which he interpolated into Handel's original score, a short movement consisting only of the theme and variations two and three of the present work. Exactly why Handel provided this majestic Sarabande with only two variations may never be precisely known, but Ford's expansion of the movement by more than half its original length makes for a compelling and aesthetically satisfying concert solo.