Customer Reviews

Bach: Goldberg Variations

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The Goldberg variations are one of the two or three greatest pieces for the keyboard, encompassing a universe of moods, and susceptible to a variety of satisfying interpretations. They are hypnotic and addictive -- the more you listen to them, the harder it is to move on to another CD! This new recording by Perahia joins the top of the heap of great Goldberg recordings on piano alongside Gould and Tureck and others (I'm also partial to the underrated Tatyana Nikolayeva and the new bargain disk by Zhu Xiao-Mei). Perahia's playing has great elegance and viruosity with a great round sound. Compared with other greats, I find his playing is a little more relaxed than either Gould or Tureck. Gould has a crazed percussive intensity (at least in the earlier recording which I prefer) while Tureck has her own intensity in the heavy mannering of each phrase (in the VAI recording). Perahia has the best of both in my view, intense in some of the faster variations (some of the trills remind me of Kissin's recent work in Chopin) with clarity and nuance in his phrasing, not quite so precious as Tureck. I don't think there can be one "perfect" Goldberg -- just as there is no "perfect" Hammerklavier Sonata. But Perahia's account is distinct, beautiful and eloquent.

A number of customer reviewers have criticised this recording. The bulk of them do so either from a position of prejudice or ignorance, or both.

For instance, Perahia is criticised for using pedal, and rubato. Anyone who has played this work (and other work by Bach) on the piano will know that it is technically not possible to make music out of every voice without judicious use of the pedal.

Besides, notes which linger on in Bach add complexity, and understanding. Often, holding a note a little longer demonstrates a horizontal (melodic) or vertical (harmonic) connection otherwise only hinted at.

Perahia is a model of restraint in his use of pedal, despite the criticism.

As for the criticism of the use of rubato, I suggest that for a start, the reviewer should define what they mean. Are they talking about within the beat, the bar, a phrase?

Whatever they mean, only someone who has not played Bach would imagine that it can be played musically with a slavish adherence to the metronome.

Rubato is only a problem when it obscures the sense of the music. In some epochs, more is permitted. In Horowitz's day, much more freedom was allowed. Horowitz is always convincing. As is Perahia, who is a model of restraint (to adopt the rubato-disapprover's sense of right and wrong) compared to Horowitz.

Perahia's uses phrase-based rubato and he conceives the music in large phrases. His rubato simply emphasises the architecture of the music, as he feels it.

Others call the performance "idiosyncratic". Ironically, some of these people prefer Gould, who is both idiosyncratic, self-indulgent, and sometimes plain idiotic.

Others criticise what they perceive to be his emphasis on the bass-line. Perahia simply gives each voice equal weight, which is exactly what the music calls for. That is the beauty of Bach, every voice is equally important. Other players (such as Schiff, for instance, when he plays Bach fugues) tend to emphasis what they perceive to be the melodic voice.

Yet another customer says that they "prefer Perahia's poetic period", which they imagine was years ago. Have they listened to his recent recording "Songs without Words", in particular, "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland"? There has been no loss of "poetry" in Perahia's playing, though he has never had the weight, depth, and sadness of a player like Nikolaeva, which may come from the sorrow of decades of Russian winters.

Perahia articulates each voice faultlessly. He does not call attention to himself, and he uses a pianist's tools (ie, rubato, pedal, touch) to sculpt his interpretation.

It is a fine performance.

Perahia's explanation of his understanding of the technical aspects of the Goldbergs, in the liner notes, is exemplified amply in his playing. Unlike some commentators, he makes little of the canons occurring at every third variation, and instead emphasizes how the variations mirror the structure of the Aria itself in four groups of eight - groups of eight measures in the Aria, groups of eight variations in the piece as a whole. And he points out how the last few variations express increasing excitement until the last variation, the Quodlibet, then followed by the repose of the repeat of the Aria at the very end.

However, the point is not the technical analysis, but the playing itself. There are many, many felicities in his playing: the fairly rare but generally playful embellishments, the rock-solid fingers, the lightness of the fleet variations, the gravity of the slower variations, including the palpable grief of the last great slow variation, the onward rush at the end.

This is a great recording from a great artist.

I have only four recordings of the Goldberg Variations (including this one). Despite the general acclaim of the Gould recordings, I find Gould's rendition eccentric and not particularly thoughtful (sacrilege I know). Andras Schiff's recording is cold and lifeless - not far from what a computerized keyboard might produce if programmed to play this music. Daniel Barenboim's live performance is impressive and very introspective. I find the Perahia recording similar in both style and interpretation. This is my kind of Goldberg, without the exaggerated voicing or strange phrasing heard so often from other artists. I only wish he had cut his fingernails before recording this disc as the sound of clicking nails during fast variations is somewhat distracting.

Of the many Goldberg Variation recordings that exist, what sets this one apart is the sense that Perahia has approached the cycle as a whole. This is not to say that there are not abundant piano affects and details--the playing is superb (in particular the occasional fluttering of trills here and there like butterflies is especially wonderful), and the tone of the piano is continuously warm and pleasant to listen to.

If you are already a fan of the Goldberg Variations, you probably own this. For those unfamiliar with the work, this is an almost perfect place to start to become familiarized with one of the greatest cycles of keyboard music ever composed. (It was written for harpsichord, but is particularly well-suited for performance on piano. To the extent that Bach liked to re-arrange his own music for different instruments, one suspects he would not have objected to hearing his Variations on the piano.)

As other reviews have noted, Perahia strikes a very apt balance between the kind of percussiveness one finds on Gould's recording, the technical correctness of Hewitt, and the slushiness (sorry for that word) of more Romantic interpreters. While this is certainly a strength of the disc, it is also sometimes a liability, inasmuch as one occasionally wants some Gouldian wig-out, or some of Tureck's protracted introspectiveness, or some of Gavrilov's theatrical brilliance. The impression is that, by Perahia's focus on the overall cycle of the music, there has been less attention devoted to stylistically rendering individual pieces. In other words, Perahia's vision of the work as a whole has muted the kind of remarkable contrasts one finds in other recordings; Nikolaeva sometimes similarly belies something of this "defect" since she too seems to be particularly aware of the architectural wholeness and progression of the pieces.

To say this may imply that there is a kind of homogeneity that overshadows individual pieces--that it feels "all of a piece" rather than a series of pieces. This creates a certain tension, to be sure, as I am waiting for the cycle to break out of itself ... which never happens, of course. It may be for this reason that one of the most noticeable features of this recording, as also a major point of attention for Perahia himself, are the differences he adds or subtracts when playing the repeats. This homogeneity does not mean that there is no variation amongst the pieces, of course, and yet ... What I'm really getting at is that I find it hard to listen to this disc all the way through in one sitting.

This is definitely a recording of the Goldberg Variations worth owning. All of the technical aspects of the recording are almost precisely as one could hope. Ultimately, however, I prefer to graze and nibble individual performances (selecting different ones at different times) than to listen to the whole disc straight through--the journey is not as compelling for me as Perahia seems to have found it. Or perhaps it is that Perahia provides me only one carriage to ride in for the whole journey. With Gould, occasionally I'm walking, sometimes running to keep up, sometimes turning about in a daze, but I'm more engaged in getting there. And even more so with Gavrilov's fantastic recording, which makes the journey back to the aria an adventure told by a raconteur.

I know it isn't a very solid objection to harpsichord versions of the Goldberg Variations to say that the tinkle-jangle of that instrument, after a bit, gets on one's nerves. But so it is with me, so I turned to some of the best-known piano performances to see which suited me best. I compared Rosalyn Tureck's, both of Glenn Gould's and Murray Perahia's, and was somewhat surprised to find myself come down so decidedly in favor of this last. Perahia's, I think, is the most human Bach.

Tureck has been called the "high-priestess" of Bach--and I don't think that is entirely a compliment. Her 'Goldberg' seems indeed that of a priestess or prophetess searching for something divinely revelatory in the work; she approaches it in a state of awed reverence, and lingers over each note until she feels it has fully ripened in sacred significance. Needless to say, all repeats, representing the functional equivalent of Divine Will (that is to say, Bach's instructions), are faithfully, piously, observed. So this is a very slow, and, I felt, after awhile, somewhat monotonous 'Goldberg.' I can appreciate that reverence often enlarges the soul, and I genuinely miss the note of awe in everyday American life--so it's not as though there is nothing at all to recommend Tureck's interpretation. But in reaching so desperately for the spiritual, she necessarily sacrifices something human.

Gould, too, isn't really interested in a purely human Bach. He sees in him rather a manifestation of cool geometrical or gemlike purity. Even when he slows down in the 1981 version, he keeps the slightly mechanical touch--this is what the "Glossy misreading" review above so loudly endorses. This, too, is a plausible interpretation: I think every listener recognizes and responds to this otherworldly purity of Bach, and in Gould's case it combines neatly with virtuosic showmanship. And, after all, the variations were intended originally for the dynamically-challenged harpsichord.

But the Perahia 'Goldberg' makes clear what Gould ignores--once again, the Bach acquainted with and interested in conveying human dispositions and emotions. He interprets, for example, variation 25 as evoking the kind of suffering belonging to the Crucifixion, 26 as a response to the Resurrection, 27 as bitter mockery. Given Bach's profession and predilection it hardly seems unlikely that he would wish to be understood as capturing not just mathematical ideas but genuinely human responses. So many of the variations, too, are in dance forms, and Perahia is the only one of the three to allow anything plausibly dancelike to appear in them.

In short, Perahia's Variations contain the greatest variety, the most humane elegance; he lets them breathe, makes them live.

This set of Goldberg Variations is exceptionally warm and inviting. The recording is double the length of most other Goldberg Variations sets because Perahia notes Bach's repeates (as Gould does not). Perahia uses the repeats as a wonderful opportunity to display his sense of ornamentation, a spontaneous practice common in Baroque performance (although too much ornamentation can be bad considering Koopman's interpretation. But Perahia seems to execute everything perfectly). And in effect, Perahia creates believable Baroque music on the piano.

Having been a classical pianist since the age of five, my own experience with the "Clavieruebung Teil IV (the Goldbergs)" has been one of agitation, and this difficult piece has not embraced me to master it since the first time I read it's pages at the age of fourteen. The child prodigy Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (the piece's dedicatee) must have been a genius.

This recording is sentimental to me because unless you have experienced the difficulty of this piece you can't fully appreciate this Perahia hallmark. For instance, Perahia plays the variations scored (although messily virtuosic) for harpsichord with TWO keyboards (particularly #5 and #14) with such amazing dexterity and neatness.

Gould's Goldbergs are good, but Perahia's are strongly reccommended.
(Note: If your into Historically Informed Performances, try Koopman's.)

This new recording of the Goldberg's is obviously not to everyone's taste. Bach's piece inspires a great deal of passion among listeners and musicians, and that is obvious in the personal responses to this CD. As long as well all keep in mind the individual nature of taste, and listen honestly, we can appreciate the performance for what it is, not criticize it for what it is not.

I find this recording beautiful, fascinating and growing in stature with each listen. On an objective level, it is marvelous. The CD features some of the best recorded piano sound I have ever heard, even better, to my composer's ears, than the famous Uchida recording of the Debussy Etudes. Perahia's pianistic skill is beyond reproach; perhaps the only level he fails to reach is that of Gould's unearthly articulation of inner voices in staccato passages. We should all be so limited! His manner is more a legato one, and that articulation is wonderful, his dynamics are uncannily smooth, and every tempo is handled with utmost confidence, slow or fast.

The expression nature of the CD is more open to the debate of taste. There are many who love the intense spirituality of Gould's later performance, and I am one of them - on that CD I hear the sound of a musician experiencing the presence of God. But that is Gould. Perahia is his own man, and while he may not appeal to everyone, it is unfair to criticize him as such. His way with Bach is tremendously lyrical in all the variations, and he has made a choice to discern the emotional quality of each variation and indulge in it. Again, to those who seek spiritual glory, this may not be welcome, but it is what it is, a valid interpretive choice for a piece that is open to such choices - that is one of the things that make it, and much of Bach's work, such a masterpiece. Many musicians can find there way to the Goldbergs through their individual paths, that is allowed.

The Gould approach, curiously, produces a surface sameness to all the variations in search of a arguably more elevated goal. The Perahia approach takes the work as a group of great keyboard pieces built around a particular structure. In this sense, Perahia's way is highly pianistic, and much of the pleasure in the CD is hearing the piano played so incredibly with such challenging material. There is a pleasure in sound for sounds sake, of which it is to the pianists credit that he can draw this out of Bach - and something that a purist [a rather misguided lifestyle anyway] may not enjoy. Perahia's Bach is colorful, sensual, but never shallow. He is finding the pianistic means within each variation to bring the emotional fruit of that section to bear. If you like your Bach colorful and tasty, if you love this piece and cherish many different views of it, or if you simply believe that different musicians can say different things, equally profoundly, with the same material, than you should buy this incredible recording.

Murray Perahia's interpretation of J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations is bold and new, an approach that offends some but is receiving celestial praise from others. Ted Libbey (Performance Today, 2/22/01) bemoans the Grammy's overlooking this as the clear pick for top classical solo CD of 2000. Erik Tarloff (Slate, 2/5/01) goes further, calling this "just possibly, the greatest solo piano recording of all time." A few Bach purists find it irreverent and invalid, but who's to say? Taste is, after all, in the buds of the beholder.

Like it or not, one thing is clear: Perahia goes for it, attacking the keys like no one since Glenn Gould in several of the variations, while bringing a softer, less metronomic quality to most of the work than Gould and most everyone else.

What makes this especially satisfying is the coherence of Perahia's interpretation. Bach is renowned for his combining different dance forms, especially in his suites and partitas, and Perahia brings out the dancing sensibility brilliantly in this version of the Goldbergs. This is a delightful ballet, not a collection of stately allemandes, courantes, sarabandes and minuets. Mr. Perahia sways gently and delicately through the canons (Variations #3, 6, 9, 12 and so on); spins and toe-dances nimbly through Variations #5 & 28; skips elegantly in Variation #7; gallops his way through #8 (a gigue) & 14; runs tippy-toe through #11, 17, 20, 23 & 26; and marches through #10 (the fughetta), the opening of #18, and #30 (the Quodlibet) in a manner befitting Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Close your eyes and you might see Fred Astaire waltzing on air in #19, a brooding Martha Graham in #21, and a contemplative Baryshnekov in #25 (the adagio). Perahia's arias move you gently to and from the performance in glowing reverence.

He manages the entire recital by creating thoughtful segues between adjacent variations. Throughout, his colors dazzle, his phrasing is exquisite, and his manner of drawing distinct voices into communication to honor Bach's harmonics is brilliant. He serves up dollops of exquisite ornamentation and delicacy. The man can trill.

It is an occasion to rejoice when fresh creative life is breathed into the great treasures. Glenn Gould did this in 1955, and Murray Perahia has done so in his own way in 2000. He makes a stunning statement on the possibilities for elevating the familiar.

Perahia's recording took me some time to appreciate due to my prior conception of the Goldberg Variations, which I now realize to have been astoundingly inadequate. This is such a nuanced perforance that at first you might feel cheated of the sheer power and deliberate nature that many other recordings offer. Many have made such shocking statements on the surface that you may have not realized what a three dimensional work the Goldberg Variations really are. Perahia exposes new layers! His unconventional (yet impeccable) phrasing is the key to illuminating previously unrevealed rhythmic patterns and, dare I say, harmonies. Somewhere Bach is smiling.

Now, usually, when I hear reviewers boasting of 'clarity', 'purity', and the likes, I know the listening experience will end with me ripping my hair out. But not to worry, here it is not tedious for a moment. As others have mentioned, there is a great forward momenum created by Perahia's recognition of dance forms in the variations. He is less adamant than say, Gould, in this recognition...but I feel this recording is much more intellectually balanced as a result.