Tatiana Nikolayeva was one of the greatest forces behind the wealth of piano talent to flood from the former Soviet Union during the twentieth century, winning the 1950 Bach Leipzig Piano Competition. Her interpretation of Bach on record won great critical acclaim. Whilst others used so-called ‘original’ instruments, Nikolayeva preferred to play Bach on a modern Steinway, and this recording of the mighty Goldberg Variations—her fifth recording of the work and one of a pair of Bach recordings made for Hyperion in 1992, a year before her death—is a triumph.