Goldberg

A familiar work with a different take: Martin Heini plays Bach's Goldberg Variations on the beautiful organ of Horw Church, Switzerland, along with three masterpieces written for organ, the Fantasie in G major, the Prelude and Fugue in D Minor and the great Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor.

The Italian pianist, Maria Perrotta, graduated with distinction from the Milan Conservatoire in 1996; then she studied at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, where she graduated in chamber music.

A genuine masterpiece inspires musicians to adopt, adapt, or transcribe it without losing any of its greatness. Nevermind’s four baroque aces, Anna Besson, Louis Creac’h, Robin Pharo and Jean Rondeau, have taken a creative look at Bach’s famous Goldberg Variations and have made their own stylishly insightful ‘variations’ on the work.

A genuine masterpiece inspires musicians to adopt, adapt, or transcribe it without losing any of its greatness. Nevermind's four baroque aces, Anna Besson, Louis Creac'h, Robin Pharo and Jean Rondeau, have taken a creative look at Bach's famous Goldberg Variations and have made their own stylishly insightful 'variations' on the work. As they themselves explain: 'We needed only an informal rehearsal to grasp the incredible potential of a transcription for our ensemble. There have been other arrangements, but nobody has ever attempted this one before now, even though our instruments are among those most typically used in J.S. Bach's chamber music, in his many solo sonatas for flute, violin or gamba with bass continuo and obbligato harpsichord - and they also frequently feature in the arias of his cantatas and Passions.'

Following releases by cellist Guy Johnston and organist Richard Gowers, King’s College presents the latest album in its alumni series, Bach’s iconic ‘Goldberg Variations’ as arranged and performed by the harpist Parker Ramsay. Parker Ramsay’s artistry is distinguished by its breadth and crossing of instrumental boundaries and genres at the harp, organ and harpsichord. He was the first American to hold the post of Organ Scholar at King’s, following in a long line of prestigious predecessors, and as a harpist specializes in repertoire for early harps and new music for the modern pedal harp. The album is accompanied by extensive notes by leading Bach scholar Burkhard Schwalbach, Pulitzer Prize winning music critic Tim Page and Parker himself.

This new recording of Józef Kofflers arrangement of J. S. Bachs Goldberg Variations has been widely anticipated since Trevor Pinnock conducted the UK premiere at Wigmore Hall in 2019. The Goldberg Variations were still largely unfamiliar to the musical public when Józef Koffler completed his extraordinary arrangement for flute, oboe, cor anglais, bassoon and strings in 1938. Over sixty years on, the Goldberg Variations are ubiquitous. Bachs encyclopedic marvel of digital gymnastics and musical invention is regularly performed and recorded. Kofflers arrangement cleverly reimagines the work in a naturalistic and compelling way. In its second transatlantic musical collaboration, the Royal Academy of Music is joined by students from The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory in Toronto. The partnership with the Academy has produced five recordings with Trevor Pinnock, one with the late Oliver Knussen and one with Reinhold Friedrich in collaboration with The Juilliard School.

These Goldbergs are not yet another recording of the most intimate of Bach's great masterpieces, but the audible part of a multimedia project which brings together the Russian pianist Irina Lankova and the French videographer Isabelle Françaix, and which should have been created last June, on the occasion of the thousand years of the Saint-Martin church of Tourinnes-la-Grosse.Alas, Covid obliges, this beautiful project was postponed to March 27, 2021, date on which we will see the pianist play each of the 32 variations under the fleeting images of her partner which refer as much to Tarkovsky's cinema as to the Chinese hexagrams of Yi Jing and have as a common denominator the virginal nature which unfolds around the home of Irina Lankova, in Brabant Wallon.It is at her home that she recorded these Goldbergs, which reveal the introspective side of the artist more accustomed to playing the great romantic pages, but without making the economy of her art of singing piano, neither abandoning her disarming authenticity.

Jean-Sébastien Bach (1685-1750) : Variations Goldberg BWV 988