...[T]here is still the...craggy splendour of the Serkin. The Serkin has a fill-up, 11 Bagatelles, finely played. The sound is relatively hard and it has not been possible, I fear, to remove from the final pages of the Diabelli a strange and persistent off-stage noise, possibly mechanical but sounding like the repeated cry of an aggrieved bird. "Healthy, unaffected, dryly energetic", is how Tovey characterizes Diabelli's waltz theme, and that is the way Serkin plays it at the start of performance that is lofty, severe and always dramatically keen-edged. In the humorous variations, Serkin is fierce and sardonic, as Brendel used to be. He is even at times a touch brutal; but this is not the fascist brutality of the jackboot in the face. As ever with this great pianist's Beethoven it is the elemental sound of the anvil at work in the musical forge.
