DIABELLI: Variations

Anton Diabelli (1781 - 1858)

Variations by: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827), Jan Václav Vorisek (1791 - 1825), Carl Czerny (1791 - 1857), Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828), Václav Jan Kritel Tomásek (1774 - 1850), Erzherzog Rudolf (1788 - 1831), Johann Peter Pixis (1788 - 1874), Anton Diabelli (1781 - 1858), Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778 - 1837), Friedrich Kalkbrenner (1785 - 1849), Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886), Ignaz Moscheles (1794 - 1870), Simon Sechter (1788 - 1867)

Jan Michiels, piano

Anton Diabelli was an Austrian music publisher, editor and composer. Best known in his time as a publisher, he is most familiar today as the composer of the waltz on which Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his set of thirty-three Diabelli Variations.

The firm, Cappi & Diabelli (which became Diabelli & Co. in 1824) became well known by arranging popular pieces so they could be played by amateurs at home. The firm became well known in more serious music circles by becoming the first to publish works by Franz Schubert, a composer the firm later championed.

Ironically, perhaps, the composition for which Diabelli is now best known was actually written as part of a publishing venture. In 1819, he decided to try to publish a volume of variations on a waltz he had penned expressly for this purpose, with one variation by every important Austrian composer living at the time, as well as several significant non-Austrians. Fifty composers responded with pieces, including Schubert, an eleven-year-old Franz Liszt, and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Carl Czerny was enlisted to write a coda, and they were published as Vaterländische Künstlerverein.

Beethoven, however, instead of providing just one variation, provided thirty-three, and his were published in a volume of their own in 1824. They constitute what is generally regarded as one of the greatest of Beethoven's piano pieces and as the greatest set of variations of their time, and are generally known simply as the Diabelli Variations