The booklet for this release by British pianist
Paul Lewis, a fine complement to his cycle of the 32 Beethoven sonatas, contains various goodies, including an interesting image of the Diabelli Variations' dedicatee, Antonie Brentano (the recipient from Beethoven of one of history's greatest if most despondent love letters), and a rarely cited evaluation of the entire work from its commissioner, Anton Diabelli. Far from being dismayed that he had asked for one variation and gotten back 33, he remarked that the set was fit to be placed beside "Sebastian Bach's masterpieces of the same type." This perceptive comment ought to give the lie to the idea that nobody appreciated Bach in the early 19th century, and it's a key as well to
Lewis' reading. A student of
Alfred Brendel,
Lewis has by now emerged from under that master's shadow; his interpretation here takes off from
Brendel's emphasis on Beethoven's immediate and dramatic departure from Diabelli's theme but forges from it a big, sharply differentiated reading quite unlike
Brendel's dry, subtle playing.
Lewis' first few variations give him a lot of space, and he fills it in with variations that diverge greatly in tempo and approach yet hold together in larger structures. The middle variations are stretched out a bit, and
Lewis seems to get to the truly unthinkable quality of the harmonies in the slow variation 20 as well as anyone ever has. Perhaps in order to tie together the distinct worlds of his variations,
Lewis plays them with little (or in some cases no) pause between them. This is not a completely solid move, but it works convincingly in this interpretation, which is daring, well thought out, and somehow very Beethovenian. Highly recommended.