DIABELLI: Complete Variations on a Waltz by 51 Composers [CD de audio] Pier Paolo Vincenzi and Varios

Can one unpretentious little tune ever have been more honoured with compositional virtuosity than the little waltz which the then 39 year old publisher and impresario Anton Diabelli publicised and invited all the notable composers of the day to embroider and embellish with their own mastery? What seems remarkable now is how many chose to respond to Diabellis offer-cumpublicity- trick, 51 of them in all, not only Beethoven but the 11 year old Liszt perhaps already wised up to the ways of the nascent music industry and plenty of names that would now be considered alsorans in music history: Mozarts son, Franz Xaver; the counterpoint teacher of Schubert and Bruckner, Simon Sechter; Friedrich Dionysus Weber, no relation of Carl Maria; and these are some of the names more noted in their own right. Heres a rare chance to hear their efforts in context with the monument but for which they would likely have been altogether forgotten, the 33 variations then elaborated by Beethoven who apparently