Bach, J S: Goldberg Variations, BWV988

Written to entertain a certain Count Keyserlingk in his waking hours, Bach's Goldberg Variatioins is a tour de force of keyboard writing and this represents one of its greatest recordings. Also on the programme are two popular Fantasies plus the jolly Italian Concerto

With his 1955 recording of Bach’s epic masterpiece, The Goldberg Variations, Glenn Gould launched an important career that stands amongst the most eccentric, innovative and influential of any musical artist of the twentieth century.

Recorded June 10, 14-16, 1955

Columbia 30th Street Studio, NYC

Original recordings - digitally remastered

In 1802, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Bach's first biographer, related the legend of the origin of the Goldberg Variations, thus contributing considerably to the work's fame. They were allegedly the object of a commission from Count Kayserling, former ambassador of Russia to the court of the Elector of Saxony. The Count, suffering from insomnia, had a former student of Bach's in his service, the young Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who played the harpsichord to divert him during his sleepless nights. He never wearied of hearing 'his' variations that, according to the story, were composed in exchange for a golden goblet filled with gold coins. Forkel's account is pure fiction. Contrary to custom, Bach left no dedication on the frontispiece of the edition. In addition, it is unlikely that Goldberg, aged 14 at the time, could have performed such a difficult work! Finally, although the coins could have been spent, there is no trace to be found of the golden goblet in the inventory of the composer's belongings drawn up after his death. However, the Goldberg Variations bear witness to the Cantor of Leipzig's genius, then at its peak, combining peerless performing feats and the unequalled art of a refined, scholarly composition.

These variations for harpsichord occupy an exceptional place in Bach's catalogue, constituting, in a sense, the fourth part of the Clavier Übung and opening the way for the great speculative works: the Musical Offering, Canonic Variations and Art of Fugue. In his important study devoted to Bach, musicologist Alberto Basso places this composition of 1741 midway between musical practice and theoretical music, describing it as Ars Artificialis. This aria and its thirty variations put the finishing touches to Bach's experimenting at the keyboard, exploiting the variation form to the exhaustion of the theme.

So much has been written about the sensation caused by Gould’s first studio recording of the Goldberg Variations in June 1955 that it is hardly necessary to repeat the story of this “birth of a legend” here. But even though it was this recording that laid the foundations for Gould’s international reputation as a Bach interpreter, its roots lie much further back. From the very outset his Bach had been as unconventional as it was distinctive – and so it remains, in spite of regular attempts to enthrone a “new Glenn Gould”. (Conversely, this has meant that every new recording of Bach’s keyboard works is judged by Gould’s standards.) His habit of slouching over the piano, the expansive gestures of his hands and arms, his stabbing nonlegato (almost always without the use of the sustaining pedal), his breathtaking polyphony and his often extreme tempi all result in a kind of pianism that seems to come from another planet, reminding us of Stefan George’s poem in Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, “Entrückung” (Rapt Otherworldliness): “I breathe air from another planet.” [...]

DVD: The Goldberg Variations (1981) directed by Bruno Monsaingeon

Picture format: 4:3

NTSC; colour; DVD-5

Language: English (with subtitles in French and German)

Takae Ohnishi's towering performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations is performed on a superb new instrument from Harpsichord Atelier Marc Ducornet (Paris, 2010), based on a Ruckers model. Ms. Ohnishi is a prizewinner at the International Early Music Harpsichord Competition in Japan. Her debut CD “A Harpsichord Recital” was selected as an International Special Recommended CD by the leading Japanese music magazine, Record Gei-jyu-tsu.