Beethoven: Diabelli Variations

Paul Lewis (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMC 902071****

Beethoven's Diabelli Variationsis a monster of a piece. The composer and publisher Anton Diabelli had asked the great and the good among composers of the time (1819) for a variation each on a simple waltz of his own composition. Beethoven's belated response was a set of 33, a prodigious exploration of pianistic possibilities prompted by the most unlikely of inspirations.

The free-ranging spirit of Beethoven's undertaking and the distance he planned to travel from his source can be gauged from the fact that the first variation on the waltz is, in fact, a march, and he later found a way to integrate a parody of an aria from Mozart's Don Giovanni. Paul Lewis has the fingers and mind to cope with Beethoven's undertaking, though he does so in a straight-spined way that emphasises earnestness at the expense of good humour and wit. See url.ie/55ay