“The Viennese oracle on the core literature of Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms,” is how The Philadelphia Inquirer has described the pianist Rudolf Buchbinder. It would be hard to find someone better qualified to record both Beethoven’s 33 Diabelli Variations – a towering landmark of the piano repertoire – and the briefer variations composed by some 50 of Beethoven’s contemporaries at the invitation of Anton Diabelli, an enterprising Viennese publisher. The theme was a waltz written by Diabelli himself. Among the composers who took up the challenge were Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Carl Czerny, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, Václav Tomášek and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart.

Tema by Anton Diabelli & 52 Variations by Ignaz Aßmayer, Carl Maria von Bocklet, Leopold Czapek, Carl Czerny, Joseph Czerny, Johann Baptist Gänsbacher, Josef Gelinek, Anton Halm, Joachim Hoffmann, Johann Horzalka, Joseph Huglmann, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Friedrich August Kanne, Joseph Kerzkowsky, Conradin Kreutzer, Heinrich Eduard Josef Baron von Lannoy, Marcus Leidesdorf, Franz Liszt, Joseph Mayseder, Ignaz Moscheles, Ignaz Franz Baron von Mosel, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, Joseph Panny, Hieronymus Payer, Johann Peter Pixis, Václav Plachy, Gottfried Rieger, Philipp Jakob Riotte, Franz de Paula Roser, Johann Baptist Schenk, Franz Schoberlechner, Franz Schubert, Simon Sechter, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, Abbé Maximilian Stadler, Joseph von Szalay, Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek, Michael Umlauf, Friedrich Dionys Weber, Franz Weber, Charles Angelus de Winkhler, Franz Weiss, Jan August Vitásek and Jan Václav Voříšek.