Luogo e data di registrazione		-
	Original Editions		Telefunken | 6.35289 FK | 6 LPs | LC 0366 | durata: 59' 27" · 43' 21" · 52' 04" · 57' 39" · 64' 26" · 55' 55" | (p) 1976 | ANA | stereo
	Edizione CD		Teldec | 8.35818 XA | 5 CDs | LC 3706 | durata 67' 51" · 67' 35" · 71' 54" · 64' 40" · 62' 31" | (c) 1998 | AAD | stereo Teldec | 3984-21797-2 | 5 CDs | LC 6019 | durata 67' 51" · 67' 35" · 71' 54" · 64' 40" · 62' 31" | (c) 1998 | ADD | stereo | Remastered
	Executive Producer		-
	Recording Engineer		-
	Cover		Ludwig van Beethoven, Gemälde von J. W. Mähler, 1815
	Note		-

BUCHBINDER & BEETHOVEN 6 LPs - 6.5289 FK - (p) 1976 6 LPs - 6.35368 FK - (p) 1977 3 LPs - 6.35450 EX - (p) 1978

Beethoven's Piano Variations In the course of their lifetime, many great artists have developed a preference for a genre or a form which let them unfold their creative powers to their best advantage. Schubert is known for his songs, Wagner for his operas. Beethoven’s name immediately makes us think of his symphonies, sonatas and quartets. But when Beethoven was a young virtuoso, his imagination, as well as that of his contemporaries, was sparked above all by improvisations, fantasies and variations. Beethoven seems to have enjoyed improvising already at a very early age: as a four-year-old, he was enjoined by his father to play the music in front of him if he ever wanted to achieve success. A few years later, when Beethoven was eleven, it was his Variations on a March by Ernst Christoph Dressler, which was published on the initiative of the boys teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe. Neefe wanted thus to encourage his pupil to persevere in this genre, for “he would certainly become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart if he were to continue the way he has begun." Beethoven's contemporaries felt that his original use of ornaments, his motivic developments and his own mode of expression were truly special and unique features in his music. In one of the first letters the composer sent from faraway Vienna in 1795 to a friend from his early Bonn years, Eleonore von Breuning, Beethoven wrote: “I have often observed that from time to time there was someone in Vienna who, when in the evening I had been improvising, usually spent the next day transcribing and preening himself with many of my idiosyncrasies.” The esteem which Beethoven enjoyed at that time emerges from a statement by Wenzel Johann Tomaschek, who heard the composer play in Prague in 1798 when Beethoven was asked to improvise freely on a theme from Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito: “Beethoven’s magnificent playing. and particularly the daring flights of his improvisation, stirred me strangely to the depths of my soul, to the extent that I could not touch my piano for several days.” What fascinated Beethoven's contemporaries so much - his ability to constantly derive new material from his sources and to effect changes even in the most minute elements - also extended to language: he manipulated words no differently than he did themes, motives and figures. Variations were the form in which the elevenyear-old composer cast his first published work; they were also the form of one of the mightiest works of his later years, the famous Diabelli Variations. Beethoven believed in a simple and straightforward elaboration of his own well-balanced themes as well as of the popular Viennese melodies of the day. This is underscored by a striking observation the composer made about a work that had been presented to him: “Your variations betray a certain structure, but what I object to is that you have varied the theme. Why? What people are fond of should not be taken from them; this also means changing even before any variations have been made." The piano was the instrument of Beethoven‘s imagination, and the variation was his predilected vehicle, the form. Although Beethoven excluded the majority of his piano variations from the regular numbering of his works, it is a documented fact that he did this deliberately The present-day numbering according to WoO numbers is based on a modern work catalogue. The critical restraint which, incidentally, Beethoven also exercised on a number of other officially numbered works, does not impair the effectiveness or value of his variations; on the contrary, there is no genre better suited to one’s becoming acquainted with the “hits” of the day than the variation. And there is no better domain to illustrate Beethovens skill and abilities as a cosmopolitan and as a pianist - for he was also esteemed as a noted piano virtuoso. Finally, it is important to understand the works from which Beethoven borrowed his themes as part of his musical “surroundings.” it often happened that Beethoven's creative energy was sparked by this kind of music, and that he found in it the stimulus for new musical creations which fascinated people in his own time and continue to do so today. Hans Schmidt (1976; revised in 1998) Translation: Roger Clement