We'll remember Austrian music publisher, editor and composer, Anton Diabelli (who died on April 8, 1858) with the work that has carried his name into all posterity. Best known in his time as a publisher, he is most familiar today as the composer of a little waltz on which Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his monumental set of thirty-three variations for solo piano, now known as the "Diabelli Variations"—what musicologist Donald Tovey called "the greatest set of variations ever written" and pianist Alfred Brendel hailed as "the greatest of all piano works." The Beethoven will be paired with another masterpiece of the theme and variations format—Sir Edward Elgar's soul-searching portrait of himself, his wife and their close circle of friends, in the form of his Variations on an Original Theme, better known as the "Enigma Variations." That and more, on Wednesday afternoon's Classical Music with Foley Schuler.
You can hear Foley Schuler's musical selections—and stories behind the music—every weekday afternoon from 1 until 4 on Blue Lake Public Radio.
