大象传媒

Donald Macleod ends his week exploring themes and variations with a look at the composition of Beethoven鈥檚 astonishing late Diabelli Variations.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) composed piano music in the form of themes and variations across his entire career - from his earliest published work to his late, titanic 鈥淒iabelli Variations鈥�, lasting nearly an hour. And Beethoven鈥檚 life can itself be seen as a set of variations on a theme: recurring episodes of unrequited love, artistic anguish, angry fallings-out and constant striving for the highest pinnacle of musical achievement. Yet Beethoven鈥檚 piano variations often lie in the shadow of his 32 great sonatas for the instrument. This week, Donald Macleod puts that right - shining a light on this remarkable corpus of work, as well another often-overlooked genre: his piano bagatelles.

In 1818, the publisher and minor composer Anton Diabelli came up with a marketing gimmick: asking 50 composers to write a variation on his own theme, and publishing them as a glamorous set. He could have never imagined in his wildest dreams that one of them - Ludwig van Beethoven - would go stupendously off-piste鈥�and create one of the greatest masterpieces of all piano repertoire. Donald Macleod tells the story of the Diabelli Variations鈥� composition, at a typically tempestuous time in Beethoven鈥檚 life. He also explores other composers鈥� efforts with Diabelli鈥檚 melody in both 19th and 21st centuries: including Mozart鈥檚 son F.X. Mozart, Franz Schubert, and perhaps most remarkably, an eight-year-old Franz Liszt.

Diabelli Variations, Op 120: Theme
Mitsuko Uchida, piano

Diabelli Variations, Op 120: Variations 1-10
Mitsuko Uchida, piano

Diabelli Variations, Op 120: Variations 11-14
Rudolf Buchbinder, piano

Franz Liszt: Variation 24 for Diabelli鈥檚 Waltz
F.X. Mozart: Variation 28 for Diabelli鈥檚 Waltz
Schubert: Variation 38 for Diabelli鈥檚 Waltz
Rudolf Buchbinder, piano

Diabelli Variations, Op 120: Variations 15-18
Rudolf Buchbinder, piano

Diabelli Variations, Op 120: Variations 25-33
Andreas Staier, fortepiano

Producer: Steven Rajam