In the same year that Michael Houstoun has performed Bach's entire Well-Tempered Clavier in concert as well as a complete run of Beethoven violin and piano sonatas with Bella Hristova, a new Rattle CD reminds us of the Herculean challenge the pianist set himself in 2012.
In October of that
year, Houstoun marked his 60th birthday with a tour of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, a generous gift to his many ardent followers. These 56 minutes of merciless musical invention, bristling with ingenuity, were Beethoven's response to a trite little waltz by Anton Diabelli; a response in which barbed humour sits alongside flights of poetry and occasional lashings of furrowed-brow defiance.
Houstoun's sleeve notes catch the emotional and psychological richness of this score, weighing his words with the same finesse as he does notes on a keyboard. Setting off with a tribute to the "fabulous musician-pianist Alfred Brendel", he ends, very much in tune with our contentious times, by describing Beethoven as honouring Diabelli's theme while destroying it.
This performance, invested with an extraordinary presence and immediacy by Steve Garden's microphones, has the feeling of a journey, carefully mapped out, with Houstoun as a trustworthy and sometimes provocative guide and driver.
In seconds, you'll be swept up in the sheer swing of Diabelli's theme, riding aloft on Beethoven's playful crescendo trail; within a minute, in the mock pomposity of the first variation, we're warned, in words and playing, that Beethoven is on a mission and small talk is out of the question.
