Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. Igor Levit

My love of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven has waned over the past decades. I now find much of his music somewhat bombastic, and a forced listening to his fifth piano concerto recently confirmed my loss of interest. There are, however, still exceptions: the string quartets, the sonatas for violin and piano, the fourth piano concerto, the third, sixth and seventh symphonies – and the 33 Variations on a Theme of Diabelli. I grew up with this work in my teens (a 12 inch LP played by Wilhelm Backhaus). It's a work that demands a pianist at the service of the music, and is one that extrovert pianists such as Lang Lang or Glenn Gould should avoid. The Diabelli variations comprise a complete world within one work, and do not require the added magic / follies of interventionist pianists.

I have nine recordings of the Diabelli on my shelves — including the ever-faithful Backhaus recording from 1955 — but today I chose the recording by Igor Levit, very much a non-extrovert pianist and musician, although I could equally have chosen the 1937 recording by Artur Schnabel, another non-interventionist. Levit is hyper-efficient and dispatches the 33 variations as ordered. But, unlike Backhaus or Schnabel (or probably others) you do not feel he has this work in his bones, and that he does not have decades of playing it, and revelling in his favourite variations. I speak this as a lover of Levit's pianism but, for the Diabelli, you need super pianism. Plus. Love.