Beethoven’s last work for the piano, the “33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli”, is performed on this CD by one of America’s leading soloists, Peter Orth.

Peter Orth was born in Philadelphia and started playing the piano at four years of age. In 1978 at the invitation of Rudolf Serkin, Orth became a member of the Marlboro Music Festival. He went on to study with Serkin at his Institute for Young Performing Musicians in Guilford, subsequently winning first prize in the 1979 Naumburg International Piano Competition held in memory of the great American pianist William Kapell. Awards followed from the Peabody Mason Foundation in Boston, and the Shura Cherkassky Prize from the ‘92nd Street Y’ in New York. During his career to date Peter Orth has performed with most of the great American Orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Boston and Chicago Symphonies. In recent years Peter Orth has spent the majority of his time working and performing in New York.

The 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli was Beethoven's last great work for the piano.

The theme of the waltz, which was sent to Beethoven and several other musicians by the publisher Anton Diabelli in 1819, seemed to fascinate Beethoven, and from Diabelli’s piece Beethoven created his own musical kaleidoscope in which the score points both to the past and to the future development of music.