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Title: Greatness itself - and out of print!
Review: There must be some thing grossly wrong with the classical music world these days.Friedrich Gulda's Beethoven Diabelli Variations is a definitive recording of this work.Maurizio Pollini's version on DG comes really close; but close as it may, it never surpasses Gulda's in the most important aspect. Which?Idiomaticity.Friedrich Gulda grew up with the Viennesse school, whereas Pollini grew up with the Italian maestros. Gulda's is Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. Pollini's is Rossini, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini.What relevance has this to this work? Well, self-evident.Beethoven drawn many folklore and Mozartian materials into this piece. Some variations are borrowed and modified from Mozart's operas. Just compare Gulda's with Pollini's.Then as a matter of pianism, the two are really quite on par with each other. Both versions are sterling, but my personal affinity is with Gulda in this work.
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