Editing Diabelli Variations (section)

===Variation 31: ''Largo, molto espressivo''===
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Deeply felt, filled with [[Ornament (music)|ornaments]] and trills, there are many similarities with the [[Aria|arietta]] of [[Piano Sonata No. 32 (Beethoven)|Piano Sonata, Op. 111]]. Tovey again uses superlatives: "The thirty-first variation is an extremely rich outpouring of highly ornamented melody, which to Beethoven's contemporaries must have been hardly intelligible, but which we, who have learnt from Bach that a great artist's feeling is often more profound where his expression is most ornate, can recognize for one of the most impassioned utterances in all music."<ref>{{Harvnb|Tovey|1944|pp=131–32}}</ref>

Von Bülow comments, "We should like to style this number, thoughtful and tender alike, a renascence of the Bach Adagio, as the succeeding double fugue is one of the Handel Allegros. Conjoining to these the final Variations, which might be considered as a new birth, so to speak, of the Haydn-Mozart Minuet, we possess, in these three Variations, a compendium of the whole history of music." The ending of this variation, an unresolved dominant seventh, leads naturally to the following fugue. Brendel's title for this variation is ''To Bach (to Chopin)''. The structure is a foreshortening of Diabelli's theme.

::[[File:Diabelli Var31 full.jpg]]