Customer Reviews

Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am astounded by the negative reviews below. I have listened to many versions of the Goldberg variations, but never any better than this. I don't think I ever will be bored by Schiff's performance here. This live-concert is even better than his 1983-interpretation and I don't think it is possible to improve this one. It is relaxing and stimulating at the same time, a feeling of completeness that never is boring.
Moreover, I have never noticed anything wrong about the sound quality and think we use to blame the sound quality when we don't like the way of playing.
By the modern piano, you will of course not get any historically informed baroque music, but I can easily forget this, by thinking of it as pure piano music, valid by the eternal & boundless reason of Bach's musical thinking. So if the listening doesn't bring me back to Bach's era, it gives me something else, not less valuable. I cannot put this on without imagining something very pure, something white, like clean, new snow, white, firm and soft at the same time.

I have several versions of the Goldberg Variations, and this one is ideally suited to the CD era. Just look at the length of it, for a start: 71.11 minutes. Of the others, Glenn Gould's first recording came in at an extraordinary 38.24 mins, but this was pushing the limit of what a 1950s LP could handle. Glenn Gould's second version, releaseed just after his death in the early 1980s, was 51.20 mins long. My least favourite version, on Naxos by Pi-hsien, is 55.08 minutes of muffled, murky piano-playing.

Andras Schiff performed this new version two years ago in front of an exceptionally silent audience in Basel. (No-one appears to cough or fidget at all -- only once in the entire concert did I detect someone dropping something.) The recording certainly has the ambience of the concert hall, but there's not even any applause at the end of the recital. (Contrast this with, say, another ECM label pianist, Keith Jarrett, performing live, where the audience behaves in almost the opposite manner.)

Clearly there is not the sound of each page of music being turned over. I am so new to piano-playing that I am still in awe of anyone who can keep so much music in his head. (That's one of the advantages of recording in the studio!)

As usual with ECM CDs, the packaging is immaculate: detailed notes by Schiff himself, who first recorded this work 20 years ago, and even an acrostic poem on his name by Vikram Seth, author of 'A Suitable Boy'.

Will this CD usurp any of the affection I have for both the Glenn Gould versions? No, they will continue to find a regular place in my CD player -- I just love their eccentricities, and I find their relative brevity easier to cope with. 71 minutes is almost too much music for my mind to handle, but this is a fantastic version. There is none of the mumbled singing that accompanies a Gould or Jarrett piano recording, and I'll just have to get used to the idea that maybe JSB didn't intend a vocal track when he composed the Goldbergs.

Mr. Schiff's beautiful, brilliant, powerful performance rediscovers one of the top works of the greatest of musicians. For those of us that for years were used to Mr. Gould's 2 great versions of the Goldberg Variations, this is a unique chance to enjoy this masterpiece in all its freshness and strength all over again; there are many interesting differences between the recordings and the musical approach is definitely original. A must-buy for the lovers of J. S. Bach music.

András Schiff is able to make even those who have Bach's glorious GOLDBERG VARIATIONS memorized from numerous other recordings (or having been able to play these extraordinary variations on their own) hear them afresh. Schiff's approach is so intimate, beginning with the statement of the original aria through all the variations until the aria is once again allowed to sing alone, that he makes us feel as though he were sitting at the keyboard in a room occupied only by the artist with us as the only guest. This is transparent Bach, every phrase and variation stated with such clarity and beauty that the fact that these variations are technically difficult is simply submerged in the quality of music that flows from Schiff's hands and heart.

Works as important in music history and in the hallowed place in the heart of millions in the centuries since it was composed are bound to have strong opinions about performance - whether the work should even be played on the piano as opposed to the harpsichord, whether what Glenn Gould attached to these variations are valid or no, etc - and that is unavoidable. What András Schiff accomplishes in this recording is that touch with transcendence that makes all other arguments fade. Yes, there are many superb performances of this work and a legion of recordings that are exceptional, but returning to the very origin - the aria on which the work is based - played in the way Schiff caresses it without smothering it in either sentiment or academia, gives ample proof that the following variations of that little miracle aria will satisfy the way Bach wished them to satisfy. No matter how many recordings you may have of this work, expand your appreciation of it with András Schiff. Grady Harp, July 10

Someone please check the preview recordings for this record. The piece is performed on piano, the previews are harpsichord.

By the way, this is my favorite keyboard performance of the piece. Truly outstanding.

I just watched Hannibal again last night and dug out my fave version of Bach's variations, so's I could feel all Lecter-esque (feline and visceral and utterly present) as I was writing into the morning...

I prefer this to the Glenn Gould versions (both his early and later releases). It is just a matter of preference. I like my variations played intimately, slowly yet with depth and emotion- Schiff weaves his way through these like a nimble dancer.

It's a slow, languid, mesmerizing preformance and the audience is nothing short of the platonic ideal of what an audience should be- I can't hear a single thing from them and it doesn't sound as if the producer had someone edit out background noise. If you're looking for an epic rendering of these tunes- this is where i would have you go.

Still one of the only good things about existing in our world and age is that there are myriad versions of this out and about and you could have them all at your fingertips! Find your own fave. Dig in. The Goldbergs (Goldbugs I called them back when my teacher tried to make me learn 'em when I was young) are beautiful enough to warrant multiple copies. There are at least 25 or so different recordings (you can find countless ones here in amazon if you look- there's a great listmania that enumerates many of them...) of these sumptuous pieces by so many pianists that I'm daunted by the task of hunting them all down.

Still one aspires to rise to the occasion...

I don't recall ever hearing Glenn Gould's famous - or infamous, depending on your interpretation - recordings of J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. However, I know that these were made by a very idiosyncratic artist, so there shouldn't be any fair comparisons to Schiff's latest recording (Regrettably I have not heard Schiff's earlier Decca recording, so I can not compare and contrast it with his latest, for the ECM label.). Any comparison would not be fair to Gould or to Schiff. However, Schiff's performances are thoughtful, inspired performances played in a Baroque style, but on a modern piano (He offers some interesting comments about the validity of performing these pieces on a modern piano in the liner notes.). His playing is as subtle and as graceful as Brendel's interpretations of Mozart and early Beethoven. Without question, Schiff's latest recording of the Goldberg Variations is among the finest currently available.

And it is difficult to enjoy this version of the Goldberg Variations for that reason. Instead of bringing out the lines, Schiff washes them together with the pedal in ungainly harmonic blocks. The microphone is too far away from the piano so this just adds to the misery.

The reviewer who says the pianist has no interest in counterpoint is quite correct. No interest in rhythmic dvelopment, either, and absolutely no interest in the dance forms upon which Bach's instrumental music is based! Unfortunately for Mr. Schiff, counterpoint was EXACTLY what JS Bach was interested in. I'm not a fan of Bach on piano, but at least Gould's grunting and moaning expressed his passion for the music which he struggled to fathom. Get the recording of the Goldberg Variations by Trevor Pinnock, and hear what it means to be interested in counterpoint.

This is the biggest pile of gibberish I've ever heard. Would someone please hand this guy a copy of the Gould recording and tell him to go out to the woodshed for 50 years.
It is just not intelligible and void of intelligence. Too many changes in tempi and dynamics brings out all the wrong emphasis. The ill-chosen inflections and terrible phrasing make this a painful listening experience utterly lacking in musicality.
And yes, he over-pedals and clunks along homophonically (erractic and sporadic) burying the counterpoint.