In 1819, Viennese publisher and composer Anton Diabelli asked a dozen or so well-known composers, including Beethoven, Czerny, Hummel and Schubert, to write a variation each on his own Waltz in C major for a planned collective edition for piano. At first, Beethoven was reluctant, then he procrastinated as usual; after some time, however, he presented Diabelli with a gift as magnificent as it was unexpected: a great cycle of 33 Variations. It goes without saying that the happy initiator of the venture published Beethoven\u2019s work separately as 33 Ver\u00e4nderungen \u00fcber einen Walzer von Anton Diabelli op. 120 in 1823. This is not only Beethoven\u2019s greatest achievement in variation form; it is also one of the most remarkable examples of the genre in the entire history of music. Diabelli\u2019s simple and hardly original waltz became a pretext for unfettered flights of fancy. Beethoven used all variety of variation. Already in the First, he turned the waltz into a march; the Second is based on a single textural idea: a toccata change of both hands, with some articulation in piano dynamics. Variation IX is consistently constructed on a motif taken from the waltz\u2019s upbeat, while the next, in Presto, surprises with long chord chains over long trills in low register. Variaton XX, quiet and calm, almost entirely maintained in equal values, is sandwiched between two rapid and highly dynamic variations. The relationships with the original theme are so distant as to become illusionary. This freedom of variation allowed Beethoven to use, in Variation XXII, a quotation from Leporello\u2019s aria \u201cNotte e giorno faticar\u201d from Mozart\u2019s Don Giovanni; in another display of virtuosity (Variation XXIV), polyphony \u2013 which has already appeared before, if only occasionally \u2013 appears in its strict form of Fughetto. Highly unusual is the combination of the three final variations: a highly ornamented Largo, molto espressivo, much in the spirit of the last sonatas, a great double fugue and a whimsical Minuet, dissolving in ethereal passages.
\nAdam Walaci\u0144ski<\/b><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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