Search - Johann Sebastian Bach, Masaaki Suzuki :: Bach: Goldberg Variations

Thoughtful and very nice version on the harpsichord

Craig Matteson | Ann Arbor, MI | 12/01/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Since this work was first published in 1741 it has captivated keyboardists and audiences alike. Countless articles have been written, books have been published, and, in our age of recorded music, hundreds of recordings of the work have been made for all manner of ensembles - mostly piano, then harpsichord, but also for solo guitar, string ensembles, and I suspect many others I can barely dare to imagine. So, why this recording?



Well, Masaaki Suzuki a fine musician from Japan who has a fine reputation for his harpsichord and organ playing as well as conducting. This disk is part of a series of the complete recording of Bach's keyboard works. He has also recorded Bach Cantatas as a conductor. His playing is thoughtful and clean. Suzuki knows how to use the harpsichord and that is important because it is very different than the piano. The action is slower, there is a lot more sound from the action (although that is not as apparent in this recording as it would be in a live performance), and the tone is much, well, reedier if that makes sense. The strings are plucked whereas they are struck by felt hammers in a piano. Oh, and there are no dynamics on the harpsichord through the way you press the keys, all the illusion of dynamics has to happen by the way you decide to use the textures and string ranks on your harpsichord.



The playing here is appropriate to the variation. When there is a dance rhythm, he makes it feel like a dance. When it is a canon, he allows us to hear the imitation clearly. The tempi are never rushed. While very very different than the Gould recordings, it is more like the 1981 meditative recording than the 1955 virtuosic version.



What are the Goldberg Variations? It is one of the most important set of variations ever written. Bach thought so much of them he not only went to the great expense and difficulty of publishing them, he was correcting the printed version when he died. Those corrections were found in the early 1970s and are accounted for in modern editions of this work. Bach did not call them the "Goldberg" variations. If you look on the printed title page he published it as part of his "Keyboard Practice" series. The official title is "an Aria with diverse variations". The Goldberg name comes from a writer on Bach's life named Forkel. If you are interested in the history of this work, there is a full length book still in print from Cambridge University press and you can search the web. The notes for this disk are also above average in the quality of material they provide for the listener.



If you are interested in hearing this work on the instrument for which it was conceived and played by a gifted musician, you might give this a try."