The gaunt, serious-looking booklet photo of pianist Cédric Tiberghien provides an apt visual counterpart to his Beethoven playing. Tiberghien is a fastidious virtuoso who takes Beethoven’s idiosyncratic markings and eagle-eyed architecture on faith. The Eroica Variations gain from the pianist’s sober demeanor, clean fingerwork, and terse concentration. An occasional unwritten ritard at the end of an eight-bar phrase relieves the pianist’s ironclad grip. Only the chains of trills in the culminating fugue seem underprojected in relation to their busy surroundings. That said, there’s more charm and rabble-rousing humor lurking between the notes than Tiberghien suggests, as cursory comparisons with Glenn Gould, Clifford Curzon, Alfred Brendel, and Artur Schnabel bear out.
The grace notes in Variation 13, for example, fall flat when they should sparkle, and Variation 10’s cunning cross-handed textures lack playfulness. Likewise, Tiberghien’s 32 C minor Variations mix wonderful moments (No. 9’s legatissimo accompaniment and No. 23’s hushed, mysterious aura) with those that come off characterless and bland (No. 1’s repeated notes, No. 18’s scales), especially when placed next to Moravec’s elegance and sheen, Arrau’s lyrical breadth, and the demonic élan of the young Horowitz. The smaller variation sets, though, fare better, and Tiberghien clearly relishes (as did Gould) Op. 34’s unusual key changes between each variation. Overall, this is an okay one-disc overview of Beethoven the variation writer–but first investigate the alternate Eroica and C minor recordings mentioned above.
