Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (Tharaud)

So there’s 2 big problems you face when playing the Goldberg Variations. The first has to do with structure. The GV has structure at three levels. On the smallest level, there’s each individual variation – they don’t all internally climax at the same point, and there’s always the issue of whether repeats are taken, and how the music will be varied if repeated. On a second, larger level, the 30 variations here come in 10 groups of 3 – each group contains one virtuoso (“toccata”/“arabesque”) variation, one character piece, and one (fairly) strict canon, with the canons presented in a sequence of increasing intervals. (The virtuoso variation and character piece switch places in the first group of 3, but otherwise the character piece comes first.) But on top of this almost fanatically rigid structure (broken only by the last variation), there is a third, much freer one – in which the GV reaches an obvious climax in the French Overture () marking the halfway point of the piece, reaches an inverse peak of emotional intensity in the “black pearl” of , and then gradually recovers into the joy of . The problem is figuring out how these structures – all of which are very (very!) different – mesh together; keeping each variation distinct while also giving a sense of larger narrative shape. I think it helps that the apparently static grouping-in-3s structure that Bach sets up is actually much more flexible than it first appears. The canons are all very different – between the 9 of them we have 8 time signatures, some (Var.3) don’t even sound canonic, and all (except for ) are accompanied by basslines that hide a lot of their strict contrapuntal character. Two variations which aren’t canons (Vars. 2, 23) also have quite a good time pretending to be. The second problem has got to do with the fact that the GV is not just diverse but *ridiculously* so, to the point that it’s basically impossible a lot of the time to detect the bass line holding 75 minutes of music together (actually, I don’t think a longer set of variations comes around until Reicha’s ). I think the trick to dealing with this problem is just not to fight it at all – the GV is an example of variation as a subterranean form, something you feel rather than detect in the underlying movement. It’s a pretty fun exercise to try to follow the bass line through the variations, and see how often Bach paints himself into a corner and has to engineer an escape by compressing it, filling it in, or treading harmonic water. Tharaud’s recording of the GV is a triumph. It’s the kind of wonderful music-making that makes an hour-plus of fairly densely argued music sound straightforwardly enjoyable. There’s very little point-making or fretting over profundity – instead: lots of humour, a miniaturist’s devotion to characterisation, heaps of colour and air. If I had to reduce Tharaud’s style to a defining feature I’d probably point of his phrasing. He’s got quite a parlando style, with semiquavers that – as Argerich might say – tend to “lean forward” a little. Some of the things he does are really subtle but incredibly effective. Some examples: the little acceleration at of Var.4 (9:48), the minute dotting of the note at the top of the phrase at of Var. 7 (14:26), the surprising rhythmic steadiness of Var.9, the tiny adjustments all through (23:45 etc), the slightly sped-up quavers of , and the improvised, rhetorical manner of the alternating chords in (with octaves imitating organ pedals). There are some big stonking flourishes too – most obviously in , the French Overture, whose opening chord overspills into a lush arpeggio (35:24) followed by a long, taut silence. Some of the textural choices here are also worth pointing out: the melting running lines of Vars. 6 & 19, the delicate and oddly vulnerable , the staccato in the quodlibet’s second half.