Celebrated pianist and renowned Beethoven specialist Rudolf Buchbinder will release his first album on Deutsche Grammophon. The collaboration sees him record not only his own new interpretation of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations but to commission 12 new variations himself, echoing the original story where in 1819 music publisher and composer Anton Diabelli wrote a 32-bar German Dance – a forerunner of the waltz – and sent it to more than 50 Austrian composers, asking each of them to write a variation on his original theme.

Buchbinder has invited 12 contemporary composers to write a variation on Diabelli’s theme including (in order of appearance) Lera Auerbach (*1973), Brett Dean (*1961), Toshio Hosokawa (*1955), Christian Jost (*1963), Brad Lubman (*1962), Philippe Manoury (*1952), Krzysztof Penderecki (*1933), Max Richter (*1966), Rodion Shchedrin (*1932), Johannes Maria Staud (*1974), Tan Dun (*1957) and Jörg Widmann (*1973).

At the time, Diabelli received contributions from Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837), Frédéric Kalkbrenner (1785-1849), Conradin Kreutzer (1780-1849), Franz Liszt (1811-1886), who was barely eight years old when the invitation was issued, Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870), Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (1791-1844), Franz Schubert (1797-1828) and Carl Czerny (1791-1857). Buchbinder has included these 8 variations that the original composer Diabelli received back on the album as well.

Beethoven initially refused to write anything, and supposedly dismissed the theme for its banality – but four years later he sent the publisher his own Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli. The set, later hailed by conductor Hans von Bülow as a “microcosm of Beethoven’s genius”, turned out to be the composer’s last completed large-scale piano work.