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AllMusic

There’s no shortage of recordings of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, Op. 120, one of the masterworks of his late period. But this one by Dina Parakhina can compete with the crowd, thanks to a pair of distinctive features. One is that Parakhina includes variations by other composers from the set in which Beethoven’s work was initially published. Parakhina is not the first pianist to do this, but these non-Beethoven Diabelli Variations — there was one per composer, except for Beethoven — are quite interesting. Consider the pianistically spectacular one by the 12-year-old Liszt, or the lively registral shifts of the variation by Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, son of Wolfgang Amadeus. Parakhina is probably right to present a well-chosen selection of these rather than plowing through the whole set (there are 50 of them, plus Beethoven’s 33). The other strength is Parakhina’s interpretation of the Beethoven Diabelli Variations themselves. The pianist has a long acquaintance with this work, which she played at her final university recital in Moscow. She presents a detailed, well-thought-out reading that begins with a strongly shaped theme (in contrast to the majority of recordings, where the theme’s triviality is emphasized), giving rise to a high-impulse reading in which pairs of variations seem to pick up on one another and add energy. Parakhina avoids monumentally serious treatments of the slow variations in favor of forward motion that leads to a really relentless fugue. In so doing, she gives the work a strongly virtuoso aspect, and there is nothing wrong with this; although it’s not a conventionally virtuosic work, it’s plenty difficult in spots. A Diabelli Variations set that has no trouble standing out from the crowd.