Eloquence presents the first CD publication of a 1971 two-LP set originally issued in DG’s Archiv series, featuring Jörg Demus on period instruments playing 32 out of the 50 variations Anton Diabelli commissioned from various composers for his famous anthology, along with Beethoven’s 33 Variations, Op 120. Demus’s non-Beethoven selections were based both on musical quality and the need to contain the music within the limits of a single LP (a few years later Rudolf Buchbinder became the first to record the Diabelli collection complete). In general, Demus chose well. Some of the strongest pieces include Kalkbrenner’s quasi-Schubertian harmonic pointing, the real Schubert’s gorgeous minor-key contribution, interesting metrical displacements from Jacob Freystädtler plus a complex, sophisticated coda by Carl Czerny.

While the 1839 Graf instrument used for the Beethoven work gives an idea of what the composer’s last piano might have sounded like, Demus’s pianism hits and misses. The maestoso Var 1 marches with a stiff, lumbering leg, No 6’s trills are not consistently controlled, while less than nimble timing undermines the humour that binds No 13’s dotted rhythms, wide dynamic extremes and silences. Nor do the virtuoso demands of Nos 15, 16 and 17 match Andreas Staier’s effortless power, although Demus dazzlingly sails through No 23’s ‘BANG…scamper scamper scamper scamper’ patterns and brings admirable ebb and flow to No 31’s lyrical arabesques.

If you view the Diabelli Variations as a virtuoso vehicle rather than a large-scale Beethoven drama, then consider Daniel-Ben Pienaar’s facile, often glib, sometimes fussy interpretation. Right off the bat he slows down the main theme’s tempo in the second eight bars, plays No 2’s alternating chords unevenly, sometimes rounds off No 6’s trumpeting trills, while No 10’s presto tempo runs away from him, in contrast to Stephen Kovacevich’s comparable yet far steadier excitement. Pienaar’s gratuitous ritards in No 13 ruin the composer’s built-in jokery and his habit of not playing hands together for expressive effect makes No 18’s plaintive introspection sound cheap. The aforementioned No 23 lacks sufficient dynamic contrast between the ‘bangs’ and ‘scampers’. By contrast, No 28’s stern accents hit home, albeit at a slower tempo than Beethoven’s vivace marking suggests (Brendel truly lets loose here). Similar virtues and drawbacks make themselves felt throughout the Op 126 Bagatelles (hands not together in No 4, a breathless presto introduction to No 6 but a simple and eloquent No 3). In short, Kovacevich’s Onyx remake remains the catalogue’s reference Diabelli Variations available on a single disc; but please keep lobbying for the reissue of Charles Rosen’s towering version or the second (and better) of Peter Serkin’s two traversals.