Although Beethoven’s opus numbers extend to op.135, there were no more piano sonatas after op.111. There is, though, a variation cycle lasting almost an hour on a simple theme by Anton Diabelli. This astonishing cycle takes the listener into such distant moods, that even after the first variation it doesn’t matter what the theme is, it is all so unmistakably Beethoven.

Also on this disc, two cycles of “simple” piano pieces entitled “Bagatelles”. Small, unimportant things, trivialities, which make you think involuntarily of much later romantic composers. And finally, the usually so self-critical Beethoven allocated his penultimate opus number (op.134) to a “simple” piano score of the “Grosse Fuge” op.133!