WEEKEND QUESTION: IS THERE A PIECE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC OR A COMPOSER, MAYBE EVEN A POPULAR OR CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED ONE, THAT YOU REALLY JUST CAN'T STAND? LET ART TALK KNOW WHICH ONE AND WHY?

If you're a classical music fan, chances are pretty good you know today's Birthday Boy.

He's none other than Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Russian-born pianist who turned 70 on July 6 and is being celebrated all this year by his home record label Decca.

Decca has been releasing some of his older releases, made in the wake of his co-first prize in the 1962 Tchaikovsky Competition and his subsequent defection in 1963 from the Soviet Union.

Two of my favorites releases are the complete Rachmaninoff Preludes, which have been squeezed onto one convenient budget-priced CD and an outstanding played and cohesive 1965 recital of Chopin's last scherzo and late nocturne in B Major coupled to a truly joyous reading of Debussy's "L'Isle Joyeuse" and a haunting interpretation of Ravel's fiendishly difficult "Gaspard de la Nuit."

Decca has also released a special set of recording chosen by Ashkenazy and a complete set of Shostakovich symphonies with Ashkenazy conducting.

But the newest birthday release is a CD with Beethoven's 33 "Diabelli" Variations and (and another less well known but more enjoyable set of 12 variations on a Russian dance.)

The publicity notes that this CD completes Ashkenazy's Beethoven cycle. He has now recorded all 32 piano sonatas and all five piano concertos as well as the five cello sonatas (with Lynn Harrell), 10 violin sonatas (with Itzhak Perlman) and all the piano trios.

Now, to be honest, the new Diabelli CD is a perfectly suitable and respectable recording that shows all of Ashkenazy's many talents: an unerring sense of impulse and rhythm; an excellent sense of dynamics in speed and volume; a gift for molding phrases and defining voices; and some astounding technical perfection and polish.

But it also demonstrates what has always mildly annoyed me about Ashkenazy.

A musician of such prodigious gifts too often seems NOT to have made the music his own, to have laid claim to it in a personal way. Too often he seems like the perfect student, not a great artist.

In short, Ashkenazy often seems too prolific, too mainstream, too unmoving and too unmoved.

Too much of the music doesn't seem to matter to him, to be a burning question of life or death or at least of endless rewards for each return. You wonder if he wouldn't have been a better musician (he's a conductor as well as a pianist) if he had played and recorded less, if he had gone deep rather than broad.

What do you say about someone who has recorded the compete Well-Tempered Clavier of J.S. Bach; all 27 Mozart piano concertos; 11 CDs of solo Chopin works; all Beethoven's solo, orchestral and chamber works; all the Scriabin sonatas; all the Prokofiev concertos; all the Rachmaninoff solo works and concertos; major works of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Ravel, Bartok and Shostakovich. All have some conviction, but only a few of those dozens and dozens of performances would be considered definitive or outstandingly original. Too often he sounds like a wholesaler.

With the Diabelli's, there is also some stiff competition from Piotr Anderszewski and Maurizio Pollini, Alfred Brendel and Sviatoslav Richter, among others.

But worse of all, I confess is that frankly, although I may be in a minority, I really dislike the "Diabelli" Variations.

So what if they're by Beethoven? They strike me as being closer to Ravel's "Bolero," which even Ravel said contained no music but just lots of technique, than to Bach's "Goldberg" Variations, to which the Diabelli's are often compared because of their scale and complexity.

The Diabelli's, a monumental work built on a trifling ditty of a waltz theme by music publisher Anton Diabelli, is an impressive and virtuosic showcase but not, I find, very enjoyable or rewarding listening. I can think at least 32 of Beethoven's 32 sonatas that I would much rather hear and would find more rewarding, despite the heroic scale of the Diabelli's, which is really a mock heroic work.

As for Ashkenazy, I like a lot of his latest work best: his recital of late Chopin, his two CDs of Shostakovich works for solo piano, his CDs of early Rachmaninoff pieces and the preludes.

And what about conducting, which Ashkenazy turned to in mid-career and which has now led him to being appointed this summer to head the Sydney Symphony Orchestra starting in 2009?

His piano playing has no doubt informed his conducting and vice-versa, since he in both areas he is strongest in the late Romantic and Russian repertoire. But as best I can tell, Ashkenazy will always remain a second-tier conductor, though a first-tier pianist.

But he seems to be getting better.

Could it be that in his old age, Ashkenazy is, for the most part, indeed beginning to focus on works that matter to him, that truly and deeply matter to him, as his future leaves him less time to waste?

Listen for yourself and make up your own mind.

Then let Art Talk and its readers know.