Beethoven: Diabelli Variations

Featuring

William Kinderman
Ludwig van Beethoven

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Compositional Technique

The 'Diabelli' Variations create a uniquely coherent design of vast dimensions, filling nearly an hour in performance time.

Composition History

The 'Diabelli' Variations originated in 1819 when music publisher Anton Diabelli asked fifty composers, including Beethoven, to contribute a variation to a collective project.

Recording & Production

This recording of the 'Diabelli' Variations departs in some details from available printed editions, as none are considered entirely satisfactory by the performer.

Performer Biography

William Kinderman, the performer on this recording, is known as a 'scholar-performer' who combines performance with academic scholarship on Beethoven's music.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Beethoven initially dismissed Anton Diabelli's waltz theme, which forms the basis of these variations, as 'a cobbler's patch' due to its mechanical sequences.

Compositional Technique

Beethoven's 'Diabelli' Variations are rich in allusions, humor, and parody, including a reference to Mozart's opera Don Giovanni in Variation 22 and to J.B. Cramer's Pianoforte-Method in Variation 23.