Diane Walsh, pianist: Reviews

"Transfiguration in both life and art is a constant refrain, but it's in his elucidation of the music that Kaufman elevates the play to another level. With pianist Diane Walsh playing excerpts or entire passages from the Diabelli Variations, breaking down intricate phrases to show us the patterns behind them, we share directly in the exaltation of Beethoven's artistry and Katherine's discoveries....Grenier's Beethoven ...is transporting as he verbalizes the creation of the powerful fugue variation No. 32, bathed in golden light and accompanied by Walsh's nimble playing."

"The play's excess of exposition is offset by a parade of musical interludes, provided by pianist Diane Walsh. She beautifully plays some of those variations _ as well as Diabelli's original composition. In these short bursts of Beethoven's musicality, you can hear genius at work."

"Kaufman also has a pianist just under stage right, and as the number of a given variation is projected onto the set, the pianist -- the very fine Diane Walsh -- plays part or all of it."

CLIBURN VET SCORES WITH BEETHOVEN RECORDING

Beethoven
Diabelli Variations; Sonata in F-sharp major, Op. 78. Walsh (Jonathan Digital Recordings)

FIRST-CLASS: American pianist Diane Walsh, who took fifth place in the 1969 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, doesn't have the highest-visibility concert career. But this recording of Beethoven's 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli is top-notch. It puts to shame the recent version by that famous pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy.

DELIGHT, LOGIC: Mr. Ashkenazy, on Decca, clicked his way dutifully through the cycle with precious little imagination or expressivity. Ms. Walsh, by contrast, brings plenty of delight, even apt playfulness, to this often witty music. Her tone is bright and crisp, but not too much so. Rounding out the CD is an account of the Op. 78 sonata that perfectly balances formal logic and spontaneity.

BOTTOM LINE: Fresh, rewarding performances, beautifully recorded. More, please!"

"...Jeffrey Sugg's projections are paired with pianist Diane Walsh's rich performances of [Beethoven's Diabelli] variations...."

"Most crucially, the "Diabelli Variations" are majestically performed live by pianist Diane Walsh, in an order that has its own lyrical logic. The overall effect is traveling not just to a different time and place but also through the music of the spheres."

"Kaufman engages a myriad of ear- and eye-catching devices to illuminate the cross-century currents. Designer Derek McLane frames rotating panels of pinned-up music sheets within a proscenium of shelved archive boxes, with David Lander sending light from unexpected places for a sensuous environment of intellectual mystery and discovery. Pianist Diane Walsh stirringly plays the music in snippets and long excerpts as it's created or discussed.

"Jeffrey Sugg projects sheets from Beethoven's actual notebooks onto a screen to Walsh's accompaniment, permitting us to recognize Diabelli's three opening notes and hear them picked up, expanded and exploited in the various numbered variations as we look over the maestro's shoulder in the ecstatic act of creation."

"Diane Walsh performs the variations on a piano, stage right, to near perfection."

Pianist Glenn Gould popularized Bach's "Goldberg" Variations with his landmark 1955 recording. Might Moisés Kaufman's Tony-nominated play "33 Variations" — running this month at the Ahmanson Theatre and starring Jane Fonda — create a new host of fans for another ingenious set of piano variations?

"As a performer, you feel like you've lived a whole lifetime by the time you get to the end of it. It's like going on a soul's journey," says Diane Walsh, the onstage pianist in "33 Variations."

During the course of the play, Walsh performs selections from the "Diabelli" Variations that accompany or connect the play's 34 short scenes, in effect bridging the present with Beethoven's time (a slovenly Beethoven, played here by Zach Grenier, figures prominently in the story). Walsh says that with a performance of the "Diabelli," "I feel that the listener has to go with you, and take a scary quest in a way, to get through all these experiences and get to where you kind of transcend it all."

Walsh has been involved with "33 Variations" since its beginning, in Washington, D.C., in 2007, at La Jolla Playhouse in 2008 and on Broadway in 2009. The "Diabelli" Variations has been with her much longer, ever since she was a student at Juilliard. Walsh, who teaches at New York's Mannes College of Music, estimates that, counting her work in "33 Variations," she has played the "Diabelli" Variations hundreds of times.

Taking a break from a recent rehearsal, Walsh says that it was the humor of the piece that first got her attention, beginning with its 32-bar theme. Written by publisher Anton Diabelli in 1819, this rambunctious waltz was sent by Diabelli to several of Vienna's composers, including Beethoven, with the intention that each of them compose a single variation to the tune. Beethoven initially balked (he supposedly described the waltz as "a cobbler's patch"), then wrote 23 variations and put the music aside. Four years later, he completed the remaining 10 variations.

During the early 19th century, piano variations were normally middlebrow entertainment that elaborated on a popular melody. But during the course of the "Diabelli" Variations, the musically ridiculous rubs shoulders with the sublime; Diabelli's humble theme undergoes radical transformation. In triviality, Beethoven found a pathway to cosmic contemplation.

On second thought, might there be more substance to Diabelli's waltz than is initially assumed? It's one of several questions that Fonda's character poses, including why Beethoven composed it in the first place.

Walsh says that after performances of "33 Variations," she has talked with theatergoers not too familiar with classical music who have become absolute fans of Beethoven's "Diabelli." Packaging the variations with the play's human drama, she says, makes the music a little easier to understand.

Purists might object to how the play breaks up the variations and shuffles the order a bit. Nine of the "Diabelli" variations are not heard at all.

Walsh answers the critics: "When you see and hear the play, [playwright Kaufman] has created an alternative aesthetic experience using the music. I'm convinced by it. It has its own narrative now."

Since the play opened, her own relationship to the "Diabelli" Variations has changed. "Every experience I have with this piece is enhancing how I feel about the music and how I feel about Beethoven," she says. "It's a part of me now. And that's a great feeling."