What makes Beethoven's 32 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli so fiendishly difficult interpretively is their wild variety. The power of Beethoven's late works, from the Symphony No. 9 on through the last five quartets and last four piano sonatas, resides partly in such variety; all of them are built from simple tunes (think of the Ninth Symphony finale) treated in entirely original ways. But these variations take diversity to a new level. They careen from monumentality to rough humor to mystic ecstasy to a naïve, folk-like quality -- and the climax of the work, the transition from the large, severe fugue in variation 32 to the limpid final minuet variation, insists on a union of opposites. It is left to the player to put all the work's various parts together effectively, something that happens relatively rarely. One of the better attempts is this smooth performance, recorded live at the University of Texas in 1965 by pianist
John Browning.
Browning, often called a pianist's pianist, shuns high-drama effects; his treatment of the earlier variations is almost circumspect. But he finds little connections between the individual variations, and his performance gradually gains in intensity. By the time
Browning reaches the free, ecstatic variations in the later stages of the set, the listener is drawn in.
Browning's recording of the Piano Sonata in D minor, Op. 31/2, "Tempest," is quite different, curiously enough; he plays this sonata for maximum drama. (The sonata recording did not come from the same concert, and even its date and location are unknown.) The vague 1965 tape-recorded sound of
Browning's recording will keep it from being a standard version of the work, and he never really lets himself get into Beethoven's rough humor. But, more than most other readings of the Diabelli Variations,
Browning's holds together as a unit.