Are Beethoven’s ‘Diabelli’ Variations really ‘the greatest of all piano works’, as Alfred Brendel claims? It’s hardly what you would call received wisdom. Even Stephen Kovacevich, who has given us two visionary recordings of the Diabellis, thinks some of the 33 variations are ‘boring’. I don’t agree, but I can understand why Brendel’s judgment seems odd.
When the minor composer-cum-publisher Anton Diabelli sent his jaunty ‘waltz’ — really more of a country dance — to dozens of composers, he was hoping they’d each write one variation. He probably wasn’t expecting to hear back from the most famous and cranky person on his list — so you can imagine his astonishment when, four years later, a fat parcel of prime Beethoven arrived in the post. Diabelli was as keen on making a quick buck as LvB, which is saying something, and rushed to publish them. He couldn’t have cared less that many, if not most, of the variations were poking fun at his little piece.
The ‘Diabelli’ Variations are perhaps the only work of art that could be described as sublimely quirky. Or quirkily sublime. Beethoven spends a whole hour playing tricks with every aspect of the waltz — which is incredible when you consider that it hardly has a tune. Instead, an opening twiddle is followed by chugging chords in the right hand, the skeleton of a melody in the left and stabbing bass octaves.
Beethoven is intrigued by those octaves. He uses them to build an exultant Handelian fugue that precedes the last variation, a minuet which turns into a spider’s web of exquisite modulations. And then he ends by dumping a loud C major chord into the middle of a bar, as if to say: ‘That’s all, folks!’
But back to those octaves.
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