Among the 13 sets of variations for solo piano by
Beethoven on this two discs set, only three of them are even reasonably well known and the rest might as well come from the dark side of the moon as far as even the most dedicated of
Beethoven lovers are concerned. Pretty much everybody has heard of
Beethoven's Variations on "God Save the King" and "Rule Britannia" and folks who frequent piano recitals will sooner or later have bumped into his rambunctious and unbuttoned Variations on an original theme in C minor. But the rest of the variations here remain at the outer reaches of the pianist's repertoire: too recherché for all but the specialist pianists and too virtuosic for all but the best pianists.
Enter
John Ogdon. Although three of the variations were recorded in 1968 by the magisterial
Emil Gilels, the other ten were recorded in November 1969 by
John Ogdon, the brilliant English virtuoso who championed
Busoni's Promethean Piano Concerto and the Lucifer Suite of
Nielsen.
Ogdon's performances of
Beethoven's Variations are just as incandescent, just as virtuosic, just as compelling as his performances of
Busoni and
Nielsen and, let's admit it, the music is a lot better. Even though most of
Beethoven's variations were designed to charm by their wit and delight by their virtuosity, they are still the early works by one of the supreme masters of variation form and his earliest works in the genre are at the same level of audacious brilliance as his earliest piano sonatas. And you know that can't be bad. EMI's late-'60s stereo sound is warm and close and perhaps a bit too reverberant in the climaxes.