Recordings
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Bach: Angela Hewitt plays Bach
CDS44421/35
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
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The Essential Hyperion 2
This album is not yet available for download
HYP20
2CDs Super-budget price sampler — 2CDs Deleted
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Details
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Movement 01: Aria
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 1 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [4'12]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 02: Variation 1
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 2 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'43]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 03: Variation 2
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 3 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'42]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 04: Variation 3
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 4 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'13]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 05: Variation 4
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 5 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'03]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 06: Variation 5
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 6 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'32]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 07: Variation 6
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 7 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'42]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 08: Variation 7
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 8 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'05]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 09: Variation 8
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 9 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'54]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 10: Variation 9
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 10 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'48]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 11: Variation 10
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 11 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'38]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 12: Variation 11
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 12 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'07]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 13: Variation 12
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 13 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'34]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 14: Variation 13
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 14 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [4'35]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 15: Variation 14
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 15 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'09]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 16: Variation 15
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 16 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [4'29]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 17: Variation 16
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 17 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [3'11]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 18: Variation 17
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 18 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'12]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 19: Variation 18
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 19 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'28]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 20: Variation 19
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 20 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'36]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 21: Variation 20
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 21 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'53]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 22: Variation 21
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 22 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'45]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 23: Variation 22
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 23 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'23]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 24: Variation 23
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 24 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'09]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 25: Variation 24
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 25 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [3'03]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 26: Variation 25
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 26 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [7'54]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 27: Variation 26
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 27 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'00]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 28: Variation 27
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 28 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [1'55]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 29: Variation 28
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 29 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'17]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 30: Variation 29
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 30 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'18]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 31: Variation 30 'Quodlibet'
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 31 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'08]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
Movement 32: Aria da capo
arranger 1985; to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach's birth; dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould
Track 32 on CDS44421/35
CD13 [2'40]
15CDs Boxed set (at a special price)
(Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: Public Domain)
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But who was Goldberg, and how does he fit into the story of these famous variations? For the most detailed evidence, we need to turn to Bach’s early biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749–1818), whose Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke was first published in Leipzig by Hoffmeister and Kühnel in 1802. The accuracy of Forkel’s account has been much debated by scholars ever since. In 1741, either in Dresden (according to most recent sources) or in Leipzig (according to Forkel), Bach met Count Hermann Carl Keyserlingk—Russian Ambassador to the Court of Saxony—who employed a young musician called Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. In his biography Forkel relates the story as follows:
[The Count] often stopped in Leipzig and brought there with him … Goldberg, in order to have him given musical instruction by Bach. The Count was often ill and had sleepless nights. On these occasions, Goldberg had to spend the night in an adjoining room so that he could play something to him during this sleeplessness. The Count remarked to Bach that he would like to have a few pieces for his musician Goldberg, pieces so gentle and somewhat merry in character that the Count could be cheered up by them during his sleepless nights. Bach thought he could best fulfil this wish with some variations … The Count henceforth referred to them only as his variations. He could not get enough of them, and for a long time, whenever sleepless nights came, he would say, Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations. Bach was perhaps never rewarded so well for one of his compositions. The Count bestowed on him a gold beaker filled with one hundred Louis d’or.
It’s a fine tale—and the source for the famous legend of these variations as a cure for insomnia—but it seems that like most good stories it is also the result of some embellishment. Goldberg was born in Danzig in 1727, and was thus only in his early teens at the time of Bach’s visit to Keyserlingk, so it’s wildly improbable that Bach wrote the variations for him to play. Moreover, they had almost certainly been published just before Bach’s meeting with Keyserlingk, so the chances are that he presented the Count with a copy having been asked about the possibility of composing some suitable music. This also helps to explain the absence of either the Count’s name or Goldberg’s on the title page of the first edition. Moreover, the Aria that is the basis for these variations is found in Anna Magdalena’s Notebook, most of which was compiled years earlier (although Christoph Wolff has suggested that the Aria was added by Anna Magdalena on blank pages in about 1740). Peter Williams has speculated that the player Bach most probably had in mind for the variations was his son Wilhelm Friedemann, a brilliant performer who had worked as organist of the Sophienkirche in Dresden since 1733. Still, Goldberg is reputed to have been a brilliantly talented young musician, and a pupil of both Johann Sebastian and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. His compositions include a number of cantatas as well as keyboard works (though Forkel notes that while his playing was brilliant, Goldberg’s own music was less distinguished) and it is possible that Bach could have given the young Goldberg the theme to play. (This is one of the more plausible suggestions in the charming but largely fictitious Little Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach by Esther Meynell, first published in 1925.) Sadly, Goldberg’s career was cut short by tuberculosis, and he died in 1756 a few weeks after his twenty-ninth birthday.
The variations constitute a virtual encyclopaedia of what was possible in terms of imaginative harpsichord writing, and the piece is even more remarkable for Bach’s brilliant manipulation of the theme—the theme and every variation are in two halves of sixteen bars each, usually divided into two-bar phrases, yet Bach avoids any sense of fearful symmetry, let alone monotony. As a master of transcribing his own music for different instrumental combinations, the arrangement of the Goldberg Variations by Dmitry Sitkovetsky for string trio is an idea that would surely have appealed to the composer. Just as Mozart arranged some of the keyboard fugues from the ‘48’ for string quartet, and others have arranged The Art of Fugue for the same forces, so Sitkovetsky has taken up the challenge of re-thinking Bach’s music for entirely different instruments—as Bach himself had done not only with his own music but also with other composers such as Vivaldi, Telemann, Marcello and Torelli.
Sitkovetsky’s arrangement was made in 1985 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth, and it is dedicated to the memory of Glenn Gould, whose celebrated 1955 Columbia recording of the Goldberg Variations became an instant best-seller and introduced a whole generation to this extraordinary music—a success that was virtually repeated in 1981 when Gould made a new recording that takes a less ebullient, more considered view of the work. Donald Tovey wrote that: ‘Until Beethoven wrote the Waldstein Sonata, the Goldberg Variations were the most brilliant piece of sheer instrumental display extant. No other work by Bach himself, or by Domenico Scarlatti, not even any earlier work of Beethoven could compare with it for instrumental brilliance.’ Given that part of that brilliance noted by Tovey comes from Bach’s writing for the harpsichord, it is curious that these variations first achieved worldwide fame in Gould’s version played on the piano, rather than the instrument specified by Bach. There are numerous arrangements of the Goldberg Variations for different instrumental combinations including those for two pianos by Joseph Rheinberger (revised by Max Reger), for woodwind quartet by Andrei Eshpai, for organ by Jean Guillou, and for solo guitar by József Eötvös, as well as the more drastically altered arrangement by Ferruccio Busoni (cutting out ten of the variations and adding a coda of Busoni’s own), a version for jazz trio by Jacques Loussier and the brilliantly re-imagined Gilded Goldbergs by Robin Holloway (recorded by The Micallef-Inanga Piano Duo on Hyperion CDA67360).
Sitkovetsky’s choice of string trio produces some fascinating results. With three instruments of broadly similar timbre, the contrapuntal and imitative lines come across with great transparency, especially in the canonic variations Nos 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24 and 27, or in the fughetta (variation 10) and the closely argued counterpoint of variation 22, or, finally, in the triumphant imitation (based on folk tunes) of the Quodlibet that forms variation 30. Some ingenious reworking aims to produce an equivalent of the virtuosity required on the harpsichord: the playful energy of variation 3 puts continuous motion in semiquavers on the viola that are topped and tailed by violin and cello. In variation 5, Sitkovetsky resists the temptation to write a third part, while the two-part texture of variation 6 is cleverly redistributed between the three instruments—leaving it as a two-voice jig—as it is in variation 11. The elaborate hand-crossing and figuration of variation 14 are imaginatively re-conceived as a dialogue between the three string players. The almost orchestral variation 16, a kind of miniature French Overture, is particularly well suited to the rich sonorority of Sitkovetsky’s instrumentation. The use of pizzicato for the running semiquavers in variation 19 may cause some surprise, but it provides an attractive change of texture. The highly chromatic writing of variation 25 works well on string instruments, with the greater sustaining power of strings allowing dissonances to be relished to the full. The frenetic momentum of variation 26 is, again, cleverly redistributed among the trio, while in variation 28 there is more effective use of pizzicato, perhaps to mirror the sound of the harpsichord as well as to lighten the texture. The grand chords of variation 29 are also persuasively transcribed. Overall, the character of the music is altered in quite a subtle way from Bach’s original: one obvious difference is that the musical dialogue now emerges as real chamber music, and while this wasn’t what Bach had in mind when he wrote the Goldberg Variations, it certainly produces an exciting way of hearing the work anew.
from notes by Nigel Simeone © 2011
