Even today, exactly two hundred years after the beginning of their creation, the "Diabelli Variations" still have a reputation among many concertgoers and organisers as being "awkward" or "unwieldy" and, in any case, difficult to understand. Jacob Leuschner proves the opposite.

Indeed, it is not an immediately accessible piece, let alone one that ingratiates itself the first time you hear it; like most of Beethoven's later works, it requires intense, concentrated engagement before it reveals its complex beauty.