Beethoven: 32 Variations in C Minor, WoO 80 (Perahia, Mustonen, Kissin)

B. had a huge natural gift for variation form, but of the 21 sets of variations he wrote, he only saw fit to give opus numbers to 4 of them. It’s hard to tell exactly why this set never made it, though it’s not so surprising, perhaps, that B. didn’t think too highly of it (there’s an anecdote – unverified – that B. dismissed this set later in life when he heard someone else playing it, saying “Oh, Beethoven, what an ass you were in those days!”). The WoO 80 has none of the Diabelli’s deconstructionist, hyper-architectural leanings, or any of the Eroica’s exploratory playfulness and warmth. Its theme is incredibly short (even terse), none of the variations undertakes any daring transformations of it, and compared to the Diabelli or Eroica the expressive space it occupies is small and overwhelmingly pessimistic – it’s almost always tragic, stormy, threatening, or moody. But it’s these very features which combine to give this set of variations a concision, power, and expressive directness that’s made