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Rating: “Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli”; or how to manage to construct a sumptuous, luminous monument in music starting from just a few grains of sand...
Beethoven, the great architect of sound, managed to compose between 1820 and '23 one of those works destined for immortality but based on a futile, simple, banal starting material. A popular, catchy, cheerful waltz became for him a cell to mold, modify, elevate to the power of two, three, to the nth degree. The work represents Beethoven’s last great compositional achievement for the piano.
The circumstances of its creation are curious: in 1820, the composer and music publisher Anton Diabelli approached some Viennese and Austrian composers and virtuosos (including Czerny, Schubert, Moscheles, the eleven-year-old Liszt, and of course Beethoven) with his simple yet appealing waltz, asking each one to compose a variation, with the aim of publishing an anthology under Diabelli’s own name. Beethoven refused to appear in such a collective work and proposed to compose an entire set of variations himself. Diabelli was delighted by the idea and offered him 80 ducats for a set of six or eight variations. But Beethoven, evidently fascinated by the compositional results obtained with the first variations, could not stop his creative surge, and now humanity can forever possess these 33 gems.
Ludwig explores every hidden sonic potential contained in the Theme, to uncover its hidden, unthinkable, subterranean implications. From something innocuous and carefree, his visionary genius knows how to intuit, create entire parallel worlds, and derives from it “a river of musical ideas that runs impetuously, plunges into karst depths, re-emerges into the light with serene strength and finally evaporates into the celestial spheres of a Minuet” (Giorgio Pestelli).
The references to his predecessors are manifold, and one cannot help but compare this masterpiece to another great monument of the past, Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.”
Similar in form, extent, and inspiration, these two remarkable clusters of pearls feature two jazzists ante litteram playing with their immense imagination, and “improvising” on starting material that is, in the end, conceptually equivalent to a “standard,” almost as if the themes were “Night And Day” or “All The Things You Are”. But obviously the apparent spontaneity of the notes played hides in both cases a rigorously logical and compositional thread, of Teutonic severity, of mocking perfection, multivariate aesthetic and poetic equations of sonic fiber.
During the listening of the Diabelli Variations, as the air becomes clear and rarefied, it feels like catching a fond greeting, almost a wink, to the Mozart of the Piano Sonatas, and Mozart himself is directly quoted in Variation XXII, where the aria sung by Leporello in “Notte e giorno faticar” from “Don Giovanni” is unmistakably recognizable. Another passing shadow is that of Bach in “Variation XXIV: Fughetta: Andante,” while in “Variation XXXI: Largo, molto espressivo,” one can even sense an anticipation of a yet-to-come Chopin, with a lyricism and pathos worthy of a Nocturne by the great Pole. This modernity is truly disconcerting, but it should not be surprising, as like many other works of genius, the Diabelli Variations are both a reflection on the past (and relative stylistic synthesis) as well as a formidable glance into the future.
It is very important to emphasize the organicity of these Variations, played without interruption and connected with absolute perfection and great irony, alternating moods, sensations, and emotions. Every microscopic aspect of the starting waltz is analyzed, and scholarly and popular, serene and dark, percussive and melodic aspects coexist. But these oppositions should not be thought of as arbitrary, but rather as governed by a sovereign intelligence, which enjoys playing with everything because it has understood everything.
The interpretation I would recommend is the one recorded in '96 for RCA Red Seal by the young Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen, endowed with brilliant technique (that magical legato, à la Glenn Gould) and great maturity and interpretative authority. What hits the mark is that sense of brazenness and freshness with which he clothes every note.
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