Customer Reviews

Beethoven: Diabelli Variations

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An excellent rendition and reading of the "Diabelli Variations" by (in my opinion) the best pianist of LvB's compositions for solo piano. If you are looking into anything of LvB's for solo piano, I highly recommend Alfred Brendel for any of them.

You know that a reviewer has gone bonkers when he says (as the Gramophone reviewer did in 1990) that the pauses between the Diabelli variations are "a source of wonder." Gosh, imagine how overwhelming it must be when Brendel actually plays notes. This studio recording form 1988 was his third, following a 1968 recording on Vox, made at a time before the pianist was picked up by major labels, even though he was already 37, with a sizable international reputation. The second recording, a live one from 1976, seems to be the favorite among Brendel fanciers for its improvisatory quality and powerful approach. Although Brendel produces a big tone, he avoids the pedal; therefore, even the fawning Gramophone concedes that on records his tone "can easily be made to sound pinched, or above a certain dynamic level, metallic." Non-fans would go farther and use words like sterile, brittle, and clinical.

Here we get a studio recording from 1988 that reveals something even non-fans must admit: Brendel has the measure of the Bidabellis. He doesn't attempt to dramatize each variation by giving it its own character -- this is a consistent world, or as consistent as these baffling, tumultuous variations can be. for maximum drama, to the point of being nerve-racking, one must turn to Richter, who all but destroys the piano from the initial statement of Diaballi's trivial, almost brainless waltz tune. Because he has a probing intellect, Brendel can unravel the thorny tangle of this very long, very intractable work. And since his tendency is to view this as essentially comic music, he scales back the towering ambitions of, say, Serkin or Pollini. His Diabellis are easier to take in one stretch, something he has in common with Kovacevich in his two recordings.

I can't speak of this recording with presumed expertise because I don't have any. I'm not that comfortable in the inhospitable landscape of this music. Still, my favored recording is probably Brendel's very first, and much of its sparkle and panache is available here, in better sound and on a better piano.

Late Beethoven, a little surly, especially with the insipid theme he's been given, so dissects it down to its bones and rebuilds it the way it should have been. There's a monster inside it! And Brendel has his measure! A desert island recording.

Indisputably, Alfred Brendel is one of the very rare pianists who re-think - from a composer-oriented point of view - every piece they play. This particular approach makes his renditions so charming and finally gives them a seductive air of inevitability. In Brendel's hands every piece has both to make sense throughout and give rise to proper emotions. To achieve such a high standard of consistency in musical terms it is not about only overcome technical issues or seeking for proper moods of a certain work, but striving to master the subtle relationships occurring at the most intimate level between its structure and character. A truly master of the keyboard, Brendel excels in relating in a very precise and efficient manner different textures or phrases to meaningful utterances. Sounds are not mere physical vibrations to come and go: they carry sense and feeling aiming to rise an intelligible profound emotion in listener. To be able to convey something at the keyboard presumes to understand and feel it before, seems to state Brendel's way of playing.

To date Brendel highly valuates his youthful experience as composer and urges his disciples to approach this way in order to become accomplished interpreters. Why? Because a thinker at the piano like Brendel knows that an efficient insight must develop into a robust intellectual device able to play with emotions, which in his words "must remain alpha and omega of music".

In this connection, he offers here a wondrous version of this huge monument of the piano literature called Diabelli Variations. His reading is not dry or scholastic, but full of humour, playful, witty, sometimes cruelly mockingly, touching and refined..

Highly recommended!

It seemed to me that he performed in a playful and idiosynchratic style rather than the more hammer-and-anvil approach I expected. Some variations far too fast for my taste. I much prefer Serkin.