Goldberg Variations [Import]

Alexander Paley (Artist), Johann Sebastian Bach (Composer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
• Audio CD (May 8, 2007)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Import
• Label: Hanssler Classics
• ASIN: B000JFXSO6
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #455,713 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Aria

2. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 1 a 1 Clav.

3. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 2 a 1 Clav.

4. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 3 a 1 Clav. Canone all'Unisono

5. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 4 a 1 Clav.

6. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 5 a 1 ovvero 2 Clav.

7. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 6 a 1 Clav. Canone alla Seconda

8. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 7 a 1 ovvero 2 Clav.

9. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 8 a 2 Clav.

10. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 9 Canone alla Terza a 1 Clav.

See all 16 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 16 Ouverture a 1 Clav.

2. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 17 a 2 Clav.

3. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 18 Canone alla Sesta a 1 Clav.

4. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 19 a 1 Clav.

5. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 20 a 2 Clav.

6. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 21 Canone alla Settima

7. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 22 Alla breve a 1 Clav.

8. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 23 a 2 Clav.

9. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 24 Canone all'Ottava a 1 Clav.

10. Goldberg Variations, for keyboard (Clavier-Übung IV), BWV 988 (BC L9): Variatio 25 a 2 Clav.

See all 15 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

"Once in a while, never often enough, a recital is so exhilarating that it reaches far into the intermission, which becomes a delicious interlude between the lingering vapors of superlative artistry already experienced and the enormous pleasure of knowing there is still more to come." -- The Washington Post [on a live performance by Alexander Paley of The Goldberg Variations]

This is without doubt one of the great recorded performances of The Goldberg Variations, by one of today's most exciting classical pianists. Born in Moldavia, Alexander Paley began playing the piano when he was six. At sixteen he won the National Music Competition of Moldavia. Subsequently, he studied at the Moscow Conservatory. He went on to win major awards, including First Prize at the Leipzig International Bach Competition in 1984 and the Bösendorfer Prize in 1986. Paley recreates his artistic triumph employing the well-articulated and colorful registration of the Blüthner Concert Grand.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Goldbergs for our age, November 25, 2007

By 

Nikos A. Salingaros (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Goldberg Variations (Audio CD)

Alexander Paley gives us a highly ornamented account, taking every repeat, unlike Gould and most other performers. He also plays without haste those variations he feels should be deliberate. Two disks give him the breathing space he needs. If you want to immerse yourself in a true Baroque experience, then this recording is for you. If you want a dry, staccato, rapid performance, then go elsewhere. This is a piano performance. Paley in a phenomenal pianist, who uses all the color of his instrument to convince the listener of the majesty of Bach's genius. This rendition is not academic: it is alive, dreamy, intense, intimate, grand, wonderful. Many previous pianists' attempts at ornamentation failed, to my mind, because the performer could not get into the Baroque spirit. The ornamentation seemed contrived, added on, and ultimately annoying. By contrast, the ornamentation here is organic -- it grows out of the written notes.

Highly recommended.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An enduring favourite, February 21, 2010

By 

Laurence R. Hunt "Laurence Hunt" (Kenora, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Goldberg Variations (Audio CD)

This is a disc I return to over and over. Paley's Bach is the ideal companion for a contemplative day. Cool, clear and crisp, this is pleasant and enduring background or foreground music. One of my all-time favourites.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting Experiment, June 9, 2010

By 

Snow Leopard (Urbana, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bach, J.S.: Goldberg Variations, Bwv 988 (MP3 Download)

It is tough at this point to make a new statement with the Goldberg Variations, one of Bach's greatest compositions ever, and ably recorded by a lot of worthy players.

This is arguably a "controversial" recording for reasons made clearer just below. There is pretty much no doubt that Paley can play, and the recording itself is ably done. This is also, as one reviewer noted, very much a piano performance of these pieces. If you like your Goldberg sounding harpsichord-like, this is not a recording for you. Besides that, the first thing to note about this recording is that it is two discs. Why? Because it is one and two-thirds hours long. That's roughly forty minutes longer than most recordings of the Variations, making this certainly one of the slowest tempoed recordings ever. In fact, the aria, at 5'20" (not the slowest ever, but up there) proves to be one of the speedier versions of the variations on this disc. The famous (arguably climactic) Variation 25 (the Black Pearl) is fully 11 minutes long. That's 11 minutes to get through two pages of music (four if you count the repeats). And yes, Paley plays all of the repeats.

Second, I'm not sure which edition of the Variations Paley is using or if he is taking Baroque liberties with the music, but usually his repeats are much more ornamented than the first time around. And in at least one spot he adds (unfortunately rather muddy) chords, fully rounding out the bass accompaniment that Bach merely suggested with a single note. This is not new to recordings of the Variations--Tipo and Feltsman both raised and lowered lines by an octave. Adding whole chords is, however, a bit something else. Similarly, Paley follows a Baroque practice of somewhat freely improvised ornamentation, and also (thereby) winds up adding a large number of notes to the original not placed there by Bach. Doubtless this will spark a rather beside-the-point debate about playing in the style of the era versus updating the piece versus playing the style of the era in a modern idiom (Paley is, after all, not playing on an instrument Bach had access to or intended when he wrote the pieces). Once all the dust settles about that, however, the question will still remain: does this disc work.

For purists, I think, absolutely not. It's primarily because many of the variations are so egregiously slow (and egregious is the right word) that Paley can get away with inserting as many interpolated ornaments, which at least does provide some welcome relief from the barren stretches of silence that linger between notes otherwise occurring much more contiguously in other performer's recordings. Certainly, the purists will say, "Baroque practice notwithstanding, if Bach had wanted ornaments on every note, he'd've indicated so." Also, while there are generally no tempo markings on any of the pieces, this may in part be because many of them are dance forms in which the tempo is understood. And others are forms that have very established practice in Bach's compositional repertoire, once again providing guidelines. No 7, for instance, is a French gigue, and should not be played in an overly hurried tempo. As such, the purists might say, Paley's overwhelmingly depressed tempos are overwhelmingly wrong.

This might be an overstatement, but where the truth of the matter comes into play is, first of all, that there seems to be no general rhyme or reason for playing practically all of the pieces at a snail's pace. Second, and much more musically, slowing down the tempo makes it almost impossible in many cases to track the voicings in the variations. Call and echo effects are simply so attenuated that they all but disappear. The fact of the additional ornaments only adds to this. I don't mean to sound snide by this, but many of the pieces are so somnambulistic that I wonder if Paley has attempted to restore the original conceit of the piece (that it was supposed to help a count fall asleep.) Particularly toward the end of the variations, where there seems to be clearly meant musically an acceleration of the pieces, leading toward the pathos of the repeated opening, the dragging tempo becomes interminable, really.

There are, absolutely, variations that benefit from the slow treatment, but there are equally more (if not in all) more that overcorrect what one might call Gould's headlong pitch, bringing too many of the pieces to a sub-adagio crawl. The quodlibet, for example, is supposed to be a joke, and Paley seems to have no idea that that is the case. (A quodlibet is a musical form specifically meant as a joke.) Instead, it is performed at a stately sarabande pace, making the piece a kitschy farce unfortunately. It ends up dragging and becomes almost literally incoherent.

There is a liberal use of dynamics throughout, though generally not enough to overcome the typically soporific tempos. As a final interpretive curiosity, Paley does not play the repeats on the Aria da Capo, nor does he (perhaps following Wilhelm Kempff's example) play the ornaments either. A purist would object that the ornamentation of the aria is in the French style and therefore meant to be a part of the melody but, again, the question is does the change work?

I happen to think that the Aria is one of the most exquisite pieces of musical art ever devised, and at least 90% of it's amazing effectiveness is, precisely, in how the different ornamental notes add flips and serifs and simply the lightest little brush strokes of commentary on the "main" melody, as it were. Taking out the ornamentation, then, is like taking out the color blue from Rembrandt's palette.

I am not a Gould freak. But the reason there are so many who feel his performance is the standard setter is because of what his performance shows in the Goldberg Variations. It's not just his virtuosic playing and warp speed--it's that he had a real insight into the architecture of each piece, and brought that out. Others have similarly dug into the seemingly fathomless depths and come up with treasures. I'm grateful for Paley's experiment. No one has ever played the bulk of these pieces so slowly. The effect, when not soporific, is to induce a rather common anxiety (if not irritation) for the pianist to get on with it. Bach didn't, and never, wrote postmodern aggravation music, and these discs show it.

I realize that there is no disputing taste, but I can only wonder at the other two reviews here. I don't doubt the reviewers liked the recording, but I wonder if they are really familiar with any other.

I almost always say that it can never hurt to have another Goldberg Variation recording in one's collection, and I have thirty or so, but this is the first disc I can honestly say is not worth the money. Get it if you're curious and have the spare cash, but otherwise I'd recommend downloading one of the mp3s instead. Don't download the aria; it's fairly standard. If you are familiar with the variations and have one you like, download that one. You may find Paley's pace pleasing.

I found it almost impossible to listen to both discs in one sitting. And getting through a couple more listenings did not disclose to me that I'd just been impatient and not given the thing a fair shake. I've shaken it. Thank you again to Paley for the experiment. Now that the hypothesis, "What would the Goldberg Variations sound like, played at 16" (an old record player joke), the question may be considered answered, and we can return to other insights into this astonishing piece of composition.