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Site review by Polly Nomial March 31, 2007
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Performance: Sonics (MC): |
A wonderfully enterprising disc that promises much but ultimately fails to deliver the high standard required for this masterpiece of variation form. Along with the Goldberg's of J.S. Bach, this is one of the few works that doesn't need the full title in conversation to remove ambiguity.
Unusually - and I am surprised that it is so - there are substantial excerpts from the companion volume to Beethoven's magnificent contribution (from Czerny, a young Liszt, Hummel, Moscheles, Schubert and Voríšek amongst others) which frame the Diabelli variations with which we are much more familiar.
Jan Michiels clearly has a keen intelligence that is allied in the main to a robust technique. Sadly, the playing doesn't stand comparison to such luminaries as Schnabel or Brendel. Sometimes is it the lack of ability to persuade the fingers to do exactly as Beethoven writes, more often it is the misguided "insight" that becomes very, very frustrating upon repetition - when this happens with the opening Theme, I know I'm in for a long listen... This is a fragmentary reading (both within each variation and between variations) but it doesn't need to be, nor in my opinion should it be so. There is no sense of journey over the vast span of Beethoven's conception.
This is my first Diabelli on SACD but it will not be my last - I hope to obtain Beethoven: Diabelli Variations - Marco Alcantara (which has a disconcertingly maniacal Beethoven on the cover - please let the playing not be in keeping with the doctored image!)
What is even more frustrating is that this is actually given very fine sound indeed by MDG on their Audio Max sub-label - this is the best 2+2+2 sound I have heard in a "standard" 5.x configuration; the piano sound is gorgeous - a shame that the performances don't live up to the engineering.
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Copyright © 2007 John Broggio and SA-CD.net
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