Diabelli’s: Andreas Staier

O wydarzeniu

Andreas Staier offers us the rare privilege to hear the Diabelli variations on the pianoforte.

In 1819, a composer‐publisher named Diabelli launched an unusual project: to provide an illustration of the musical art of his day — and no doubt also do some good business — he submitted a waltz of his own creation to the most celebrated virtuosos and composers of his time, asking each to compose a variation, to be published in a collection. Among the names he selected (all more or less famous at the time): Czerny, Hummel, Kalkbrenner, the archduke Rudolphe (to whom Beethoven dedicated his famous trio) Mozart (Franz Xaver, the son of Wolfgang), Liszt (age 11 at the time), Moscheles, Schubert and… Beethoven. The latter, already fully involved in composing the Missa solemnis, rejected the initial proposal out of hand (is not the waltz theme a frail patch‐up of the first notes of his Eighth symphony?).

He nonetheless found what he called a Schusterfleck (a shoemaker’s tool!) and composed 33 variations on this otherwise unremarkable theme, each in turn a critical commentary, mockery and demonstration of the force of genius. The formal and harmonic banality of the theme itself becomes a playing field: exit the waltz tempo, Beethoven pushes Diabelli’s few measures into a march, a three‐part fugue, an aria from Don Giovanni, an andante one might mistake for Chopin, and in all creates 33 unique worlds both radically distinct and yet miraculously united.