Igor Levit, piano
Recitalist Series
Igor Levit, piano
Sunday, January 11, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
Sixth & I
Hailed as “one of the most probing, intelligent and accomplished artists of the new generation” (The New York Times), Igor Levit returns to Washington Performing Arts with a recital of monumental variation that challenges and inspires, featuring two impressive works rooted in an epic series of themes and variations. He brings his breathtaking technique to Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations—an epic set of variations requiring impressive technical and musical breadth—and Frederic Rzewski’s revolutionary The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, a tour de force of virtuosic brilliance and political fervor. Washington Performing Arts co-commissioned Rzewski’s work in 1976, commemorating the 200th anniversary of United States independence. Levit’s performances are acclaimed for their emotional depth and intellectual rigor, promising an unforgettable evening of musical mastery.
Reserved Seating: Washington Performing Arts Subscribers will have a reserved section of preferred seating on the main sanctuary level. Single Ticket/General Admission ticket holders will have access to a general admission section, which may be upstairs in the balcony section. There are partial-view seats on the balcony level. Display screens supplement sightlines. Seating within each level is offered on a first-come basis.
Program Details
Ludwig van Beethoven – Diabelli Variations, op. 120
Frederic Rzewski – The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
Program Notes
Ludwig van Beethoven – Diabelli Variations, op. 120
Diabelli Variations, op. 120
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
In March 1819, Viennese music publisher Anton Diabelli invited 50 Austrian composers to write one variation on a little dance tune Diabelli had written himself. He planned to publish this theme and the set of 50 variations in a volume he grandly called “Väterlandischer Künstlerverein, Variations for Pianoforte on a Given Theme, composed by the foremost Tone-poets and Virtuosi of Vienna and the Austrian States.” Diabelli’s motives were, to some extent, nationalistic. He intended this “patriotic anthology” as a demonstration of what Austrian composers could accomplish, but the project rested on a sound business sense as well. Such a volume would be attractive to the growing number of amateur pianists in Vienna who would be drawn by the names of so many famous composers and pianists. Most of the 50 are forgotten, though some of the names remain familiar: Czerny, Moscheles, and Kalkbrenner all contributed variations, as did the 22-year-old Schubert and the 11-year-old Liszt (his first publication). The names of several other contributors also survive, but not for their composing. These include the
Archduke Rudolph and Simon Sechter, remembered as the theory teacher of Schubert and, much later, Bruckner.
Diabelli, of course, invited the most famous composer in Vienna to contribute a variation, but Beethoven, then 48 and completely deaf, was not interested. He found Diabelli’s theme unappealing, dismissing it as a Schusterfleck: literally, “cobbler’s patch,” but in music a term that implies aimless repetition of certain notes. At another point, Beethoven described Diabelli’s theme simply as a Deutsche, a German dance. But as he looked at this seemingly innocuous little tune, Beethoven began to see possibilities. He paused in his work on the Missa Solemnis and very quickly wrote not one variation on the theme, but 20, and then set the project aside in May 1819. Not until three years later, in the fall of 1822, did Beethoven return to these variations to give them his full attention. He worked through the winter and completed his set of 33 variations on Diabelli’s theme in April 1823, just before he set to work on his Ninth Symphony. Diabelli brought out the variations on his theme in two volumes: the first was Beethoven’s set of variations (his last composition for piano, and one of his greatest works), and the second was the collection of variations by the 50 other composers (which immediately dropped into darkest obscurity). At what point did Beethoven pass from his initial disdain for Diabelli’s theme—a bland little waltz tune in C major in two 16-bar phrases—and move on to fascination with it? That cannot be known, but what we can understand is what Beethoven did with that theme: he broke it down into its component parts (melody, rhythm, harmony) and began to explore the possibilities locked beneath the theme’s placid surface. The 33 variations of the Diabelli Variations, as the work has come to be called, are not decorative variations in which the theme is progressively embellished but remains present even as it grows more ornate. Instead, listeners will find that in the Diabelli Variations the original theme often seems to disappear entirely as Beethoven seizes on a detail of rhythm or turn of phrase and makes that the basis for variation.
Some of these variations dash past in a matter of seconds, but others are extended and the 33 variations extend over the generous span of around 50 minutes, making the Diabelli Variations about as long as the Eroica. Such a length is remarkable, for variation form would seem to do nothing but simply circle around the original theme, but one of the successes of the Diabelli Variations lies in Beethoven’s arrangement of his variations so that the listener makes a musical (and emotional) journey across the lengthy span of this music. Many of the opening variations are light and of the same emotional cast, and until Variation 29 all but one remain in C major. Diabelli’s original theme is transformed along the way: Beethoven treats it in both triple and duple meters, and his variations are by turn declarative, wistful, dancing, exciting, powerful.
There are some surprises: Variation 22 incorporates the theme of Leporello’s aria Notte e giorno faticar from the beginning of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (here it fits neatly within the pattern of the variations), and Variation 24 is a slow fughetta. Beethoven progresses to the “climax” of this sequence of variations: Nos. 29-31 adopt a slower tempo and move into C minor; the last of these is an aching and ornate extension of the theme in 9/8. Out of this explodes Variation 31, a furiously energetic fugue. Its dazzling energy and sudden leap into bright E-flat major would seem to signal the destination Beethoven has been working toward all along, but this is not the case. When the fugue ends, Beethoven moves back to C major for the concluding variation, which comes as a complete surprise: it is a polished and poised minuet that, rather than plunging into new territory, seems instead to evoke the music of the previous century. On this elegant minuet, the Diabelli Variations moves to its surprisingly subdued close. After some of the fury that has preceded it, this ending seems strange—and yet, it rounds off the work perfectly.
Diabelli was astonished with what Beethoven had done with his theme, and he published this set of variations in June 1823, barely two months after Beethoven had finished it. On that occasion, he drafted a florid advertising puff calculated to increase sales, but his description of this music reveals not only his own understanding of what Beethoven had achieved, but also his amazement at what had happened to his own theme. Diabelli’s description reads in part: “The most original structures and ideas; the boldest musical idioms and harmonies are here exhausted; every pianoforte effect based on a solid technique is employed, and this work is the more interesting from the fact that it is elicited from a theme which no one would otherwise have supposed capable of such a working-out.”
Frederic Rzewski – The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
(36 Variations on El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido)
Frederic Rzewski (1938-2021)
In 1975 Ursula Oppens, a great champion of contemporary music, asked American composer Frederic Rzewski for a piece to go on the same program with her upcoming performance of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Working very rapidly across September and October 1975, Rzewski composed what has become a modern keyboard classic, a set of variations on the Chilean protest song El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido. The work was commissioned by Washington Performing Arts and premiered by Oppens in 1976 to coincide with the United States Bicentennial. The story of the original theme, Rzewski’s variations, and their place in the piano literature is an interesting one.
Rzewski studied at Harvard and Princeton with some of the greatest composer-teachers of the 20th century, including Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, and Milton Babbitt before going to Italy where he studied with Luigi Dallapiccola. In Italy, he became interested in electronic music and improvisation and performed with various ensembles in Europe for some years. Rzewski taught in Belgium, the Netherlands, London and in the United States at Yale, Cal Arts, the University of California at San Diego, and other universities. A first-class pianist, Rzewski was animated throughout his career by a commitment to social justice, a passion that shaped much of his music.
When Ursula Oppens asked for a piece to go with the Diabelli Variations, Rzewski responded by composing what might be considered a 20th-century counterpart to Beethoven’s masterpiece. Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations happened almost by accident. The Viennese publisher Anton Diabelli had written a theme and asked for a single variation on it from 50 composers, and these were to be published as a collaborative work. At first, Beethoven was uninterested in the project, but the more he looked at the theme, the more interested he became, and he eventually wrote 33 variations on it, a set of variations that spans about an hour. It is an extraordinary musical journey, as Beethoven found unexpected promise in that “trifle” and turned it into great music.
Rzewski did much of the same thing. For his theme he chose the song El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido! (The People United Will Never Be Defeated!) by the Chilean composer and teacher Sergio Ortega. Ortega (1938-2003), a strong supporter of Salvatore Allende, had composed Allende’s campaign theme song Venceremos. During a period of gathering political turmoil in Chile in June 1973, Ortega heard a phrase shouted repeatedly at a rally in Santiago which would become the title of the song. Very quickly, Ortega set that slogan to music, and his song found immediate international success. It has been adopted for leftist (and other) causes all over the world in the five decades since its creation. In the meantime, a coup deposed Allende in September 1973, and Ortega fled to France, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Rather than beginning with a “trifle,” as Beethoven had, Rzewski instead took as his theme a piece that was already famous (that theme is, in fact, Ortega’s complete song which spans about 90 seconds). The song is quite powerful, and it has several distinct components: its firm beginning (Rzewski marks this “with determination”), followed by a haunting melodic response which itself incorporates elements of the very beginning, and these ideas develop across the span of the song. For Oppens, Rzewski composed a set of 36 variations on Ortega’s song, and these stretch out to about 50 minutes in performance. In that other great set of keyboard variations, the Goldberg Variations, Bach arranged his variations in groups of three, of which the third is always a canon based on an interval one step larger than in the previous group. Rzewski set himself similar challenges: he grouped his 36 variations in six groups of six, and in his own program note for this piece the composer described the sequence of variations within each of these six sets: “one simple events, two rhythms, three melodies, four counterpoints, five harmonies, six collections of all these.” These variations generate a huge range of music: some sing, some dance, some weave together complex contrapuntal strands, some shout, and some whisper, as Ortega’s stirring melody is extended and transformed across a long musical journey.
The appeal of this music comes from many sources: from Ortega’s stirring song itself, one of those powerful melodies that stay to haunt the memory. From Rzewski’s endless and imaginative transformations of that song. And from the challenges the pianist must overcome. This music demands a Herculean effort from its performer, who must unleash great torrents of sound one moment and wispy delicacy the next, project the most innocent tunes alongside heroic declamation, and keep the original theme in hand throughout. At the end of the 36th variation, Rzewski offers pianists the opportunity to improvise a cadenza if they so choose, and he then concludes these variations, as Bach had 250 years earlier, with a simple reprise of his fundamental theme.
Diabelli Variations, op. 120
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
In March 1819, Viennese music publisher Anton Diabelli invited 50 Austrian composers to write one variation on a little dance tune Diabelli had written himself. He planned to publish this theme and the set of 50 variations in a volume he grandly called “Väterlandischer Künstlerverein, Variations for Pianoforte on a Given Theme, composed by the foremost Tone-poets and Virtuosi of Vienna and the Austrian States.” Diabelli’s motives were, to some extent, nationalistic. He intended this “patriotic anthology” as a demonstration of what Austrian composers could accomplish, but the project rested on a sound business sense as well. Such a volume would be attractive to the growing number of amateur pianists in Vienna who would be drawn by the names of so many famous composers and pianists. Most of the 50 are forgotten, though some of the names remain familiar: Czerny, Moscheles, and Kalkbrenner all contributed variations, as did the 22-year-old Schubert and the 11-year-old Liszt (his first publication). The names of several other contributors also survive, but not for their composing. These include the
Archduke Rudolph and Simon Sechter, remembered as the theory teacher of Schubert and, much later, Bruckner.
Diabelli, of course, invited the most famous composer in Vienna to contribute a variation, but Beethoven, then 48 and completely deaf, was not interested. He found Diabelli’s theme unappealing, dismissing it as a Schusterfleck: literally, “cobbler’s patch,” but in music a term that implies aimless repetition of certain notes. At another point, Beethoven described Diabelli’s theme simply as a Deutsche, a German dance. But as he looked at this seemingly innocuous little tune, Beethoven began to see possibilities. He paused in his work on the Missa Solemnis and very quickly wrote not one variation on the theme, but 20, and then set the project aside in May 1819. Not until three years later, in the fall of 1822, did Beethoven return to these variations to give them his full attention. He worked through the winter and completed his set of 33 variations on Diabelli’s theme in April 1823, just before he set to work on his Ninth Symphony. Diabelli brought out the variations on his theme in two volumes: the first was Beethoven’s set of variations (his last composition for piano, and one of his greatest works), and the second was the collection of variations by the 50 other composers (which immediately dropped into darkest obscurity). At what point did Beethoven pass from his initial disdain for Diabelli’s theme—a bland little waltz tune in C major in two 16-bar phrases—and move on to fascination with it? That cannot be known, but what we can understand is what Beethoven did with that theme: he broke it down into its component parts (melody, rhythm, harmony) and began to explore the possibilities locked beneath the theme’s placid surface. The 33 variations of the Diabelli Variations, as the work has come to be called, are not decorative variations in which the theme is progressively embellished but remains present even as it grows more ornate. Instead, listeners will find that in the Diabelli Variations the original theme often seems to disappear entirely as Beethoven seizes on a detail of rhythm or turn of phrase and makes that the basis for variation.
Some of these variations dash past in a matter of seconds, but others are extended and the 33 variations extend over the generous span of around 50 minutes, making the Diabelli Variations about as long as the Eroica. Such a length is remarkable, for variation form would seem to do nothing but simply circle around the original theme, but one of the successes of the Diabelli Variations lies in Beethoven’s arrangement of his variations so that the listener makes a musical (and emotional) journey across the lengthy span of this music. Many of the opening variations are light and of the same emotional cast, and until Variation 29 all but one remain in C major. Diabelli’s original theme is transformed along the way: Beethoven treats it in both triple and duple meters, and his variations are by turn declarative, wistful, dancing, exciting, powerful.
There are some surprises: Variation 22 incorporates the theme of Leporello’s aria Notte e giorno faticar from the beginning of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (here it fits neatly within the pattern of the variations), and Variation 24 is a slow fughetta. Beethoven progresses to the “climax” of this sequence of variations: Nos. 29-31 adopt a slower tempo and move into C minor; the last of these is an aching and ornate extension of the theme in 9/8. Out of this explodes Variation 31, a furiously energetic fugue. Its dazzling energy and sudden leap into bright E-flat major would seem to signal the destination Beethoven has been working toward all along, but this is not the case. When the fugue ends, Beethoven moves back to C major for the concluding variation, which comes as a complete surprise: it is a polished and poised minuet that, rather than plunging into new territory, seems instead to evoke the music of the previous century. On this elegant minuet, the Diabelli Variations moves to its surprisingly subdued close. After some of the fury that has preceded it, this ending seems strange—and yet, it rounds off the work perfectly.
Diabelli was astonished with what Beethoven had done with his theme, and he published this set of variations in June 1823, barely two months after Beethoven had finished it. On that occasion, he drafted a florid advertising puff calculated to increase sales, but his description of this music reveals not only his own understanding of what Beethoven had achieved, but also his amazement at what had happened to his own theme. Diabelli’s description reads in part: “The most original structures and ideas; the boldest musical idioms and harmonies are here exhausted; every pianoforte effect based on a solid technique is employed, and this work is the more interesting from the fact that it is elicited from a theme which no one would otherwise have supposed capable of such a working-out.”
The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
(36 Variations on El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido)
Frederic Rzewski (1938-2021)
In 1975 Ursula Oppens, a great champion of contemporary music, asked American composer Frederic Rzewski for a piece to go on the same program with her upcoming performance of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Working very rapidly across September and October 1975, Rzewski composed what has become a modern keyboard classic, a set of variations on the Chilean protest song El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido. The work was commissioned by Washington Performing Arts and premiered by Oppens in 1976 to coincide with the United States Bicentennial. The story of the original theme, Rzewski’s variations, and their place in the piano literature is an interesting one.
Rzewski studied at Harvard and Princeton with some of the greatest composer-teachers of the 20th century, including Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, and Milton Babbitt before going to Italy where he studied with Luigi Dallapiccola. In Italy, he became interested in electronic music and improvisation and performed with various ensembles in Europe for some years. Rzewski taught in Belgium, the Netherlands, London and in the United States at Yale, Cal Arts, the University of California at San Diego, and other universities. A first-class pianist, Rzewski was animated throughout his career by a commitment to social justice, a passion that shaped much of his music.
When Ursula Oppens asked for a piece to go with the Diabelli Variations, Rzewski responded by composing what might be considered a 20th-century counterpart to Beethoven’s masterpiece. Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations happened almost by accident. The Viennese publisher Anton Diabelli had written a theme and asked for a single variation on it from 50 composers, and these were to be published as a collaborative work. At first, Beethoven was uninterested in the project, but the more he looked at the theme, the more interested he became, and he eventually wrote 33 variations on it, a set of variations that spans about an hour. It is an extraordinary musical journey, as Beethoven found unexpected promise in that “trifle” and turned it into great music.
Rzewski did much of the same thing. For his theme he chose the song El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido! (The People United Will Never Be Defeated!) by the Chilean composer and teacher Sergio Ortega. Ortega (1938-2003), a strong supporter of Salvatore Allende, had composed Allende’s campaign theme song Venceremos. During a period of gathering political turmoil in Chile in June 1973, Ortega heard a phrase shouted repeatedly at a rally in Santiago which would become the title of the song. Very quickly, Ortega set that slogan to music, and his song found immediate international success. It has been adopted for leftist (and other) causes all over the world in the five decades since its creation. In the meantime, a coup deposed Allende in September 1973, and Ortega fled to France, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Rather than beginning with a “trifle,” as Beethoven had, Rzewski instead took as his theme a piece that was already famous (that theme is, in fact, Ortega’s complete song which spans about 90 seconds). The song is quite powerful, and it has several distinct components: its firm beginning (Rzewski marks this “with determination”), followed by a haunting melodic response which itself incorporates elements of the very beginning, and these ideas develop across the span of the song. For Oppens, Rzewski composed a set of 36 variations on Ortega’s song, and these stretch out to about 50 minutes in performance. In that other great set of keyboard variations, the Goldberg Variations, Bach arranged his variations in groups of three, of which the third is always a canon based on an interval one step larger than in the previous group. Rzewski set himself similar challenges: he grouped his 36 variations in six groups of six, and in his own program note for this piece the composer described the sequence of variations within each of these six sets: “one simple events, two rhythms, three melodies, four counterpoints, five harmonies, six collections of all these.” These variations generate a huge range of music: some sing, some dance, some weave together complex contrapuntal strands, some shout, and some whisper, as Ortega’s stirring melody is extended and transformed across a long musical journey.
The appeal of this music comes from many sources: from Ortega’s stirring song itself, one of those powerful melodies that stay to haunt the memory. From Rzewski’s endless and imaginative transformations of that song. And from the challenges the pianist must overcome. This music demands a Herculean effort from its performer, who must unleash great torrents of sound one moment and wispy delicacy the next, project the most innocent tunes alongside heroic declamation, and keep the original theme in hand throughout. At the end of the 36th variation, Rzewski offers pianists the opportunity to improvise a cadenza if they so choose, and he then concludes these variations, as Bach had 250 years earlier, with a simple reprise of his fundamental theme.
Our Partners
Washington Performing Arts 60th anniversary year is generously sponsored by Dr. Gary Mather † and Ms. Christina Co Mather.
This performance is made possible in part by the generous support of the following sponsors: Susan S. Angell; Anne and Burt Fishman; and Ellen and Michael Gold.
Washington Performing Arts’s classical music performances this season are made possible in part through the generous support of Betsy and Robert Feinberg.
His Excellency, Jens Hanefeld, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the honorary patron of this engagement.
Special thanks to the following lead supporters of Washington Performing Arts’s mission-driven work: Jacqueline Badger Mars and Mars, Incorporated; D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities; the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs Program and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; and Events DC.
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