Beethoven's Diabelli Variations
Diabelli Variations
Gramophone Choice
Beethoven Diabelli Variations Bach Partita No 4, BWV828
Stephen Kovacevich (pf)
Onyx ONYX4035 (78’ · DDD) Buy from Amazon
Kovacevich writes in his introduction to this new set that it was the Diabelli Variations – via the Serkin recording (Sony) – that first made him love Beethoven. It’s a reading that still holds its head high today, and just a decade later, in 1968, Kovacevich set down his own recording, rightly acclaimed and something of a calling-card for the young pianist. But what of this new performance, made 40 years later? What is immediately striking is the sense of a cumulative whole, the tension and indeed speed with which he approaches the work. The work’s juxtapositions of the sublime and the ridiculous are presented with a vividness that sounds more live than studio-bound.
Kovacevich emphasises the sense of continuous development with a certain fleetness of finger: his opening theme sets quite a pace, and dances more lightly than many rival versions. It’s certainly faster than his own earlier recording (Philips). But more important is the sense that Kovacevich has now encompassed the extremes of the work more fully. His understanding of Beethoven’s juxtapositions of beauty and crudity, reflection and action, and the sheer dynamic range, are fully exposed in this new version, which captures the piano sound beautifully.
Kovacevich has, in the intervening decades between his first and second Diabellis, recorded a complete sonata cycle. That familiarity with Beethoven’s language in the final years shows and, again and again, Kovacevich reveals how that humour can tip over into something far more menacing. Perhaps in his younger days Beethoven would have ended the set with the fugue, but instead we get a final addition: a switch to C major and an utter change in mood, with a graceful, quasi-Mozartian idea, whirled ever higher. It’s as enigmatic and undefinable as anything Beethoven wrote and a transcendent ending to this remarkable performance.
Kovacevich might be less associated with Bach, but let’s not forget that his teacher was that consummate Bachian, Myra Hess. He treads a middle path between the tonally slimline, rhythmically motivated readings of Angela Hewitt and the more obviously romantic ones of Cédric Tiberghien. And it’s an enlightening partner to the Diabelli Variations, not only in its basis in dance rhythms but also in its scope and its extrovert demeanour, whose tone is set with the grand Ouverture. Altogether, a disc to treasure.
Additional Recommendation
Diabelli Variations
Piotr Anderszewski (pf)
Virgin Classics 545468-2 (63‘ · DDD) Buy from Amazon
This is the most intelligent, searching and delightful account of the Diabelli Variations to have reached us since Brendel’s (Philips). It gives opportunities everywhere to admire a superfine control of every aspect of piano playing, but that isn’t the great thing about it, splendid though the finish is. The performance is entirely composer-led, driven by the music, not by ideas about the music, and in that sense you hardly notice the means to the end at all. It’s an account of the Diabellis based on a much closer reading of the text than you usually get, and you’ve only to hear the theme and the first variation to perceive an exceptional balance of rigour and imagination: rigour in the way Anderszewski has thought about every inflection marked by Beethoven; imagination, evident here and throughout, in the quality with which he has realised them in terms of expression and vividness of character. His rhythm is tremendous.
More remarkable still is his feeling for dynamics, so copiously prescribed in this work and yet treated with approximation by so many players. He’s not one to play the daredevil, and you could say his tempi in the quick numbers are sometimes surprisingly moderate; but he isn’t a sober-sides. He has fingers which are always saying something, a varied and attractive sound, usually built from the bass up, and that rare ability to get from one thing to another with pinpoint accuracy, expressively speaking, as if forging sonority and character with a laser. A fine recording, and the sound is at an apt distance.
