BaL 18.02.12 - Bach Goldberg Variations

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It's always down to the artists' interpretation, unfortunately!

Yes and no.
Some Desert Island Discs guests actually asked for scores rather than recordings.

[BBMmk2]

Yes and no.
Some Desert Island Discs guests actually asked for scores rather than recordings.

Aha! that's good!

[kernelbogey]

Beatrice Rana

I've just listened for the first time to Beatrice Rana's piano recording (released 24 February) just arrived from Presto. I heard a couple of variations played on R3 (I can't figure out when, but not Record Review) and was immediately captivated. I'm mildly obsessed with this work, and am most familiar with Hewitt, but have also enjoyed Esfahani on harpsichord.

There is a kind of meditative purity to her interpretation, with great clarity and superb technique. Her insert note, very elegantly translated from Italian into English, is deeply thoughtful - indeed touching on the transcendental.

I just wanted to gush a bit about it here and may add more after further listenings - but (obviously) recommend it highly.

[kernelbogey]

I've just listened for the first time to Beatrice Rana's piano recording (released 24 February) just arrived from Presto. I heard a couple of variations played on R3 (I can't figure out when, but not Record Review) and was immediately captivated. I'm mildly obsessed with this work, and am most familiar with Hewitt, but have also enjoyed Esfahani on harpsichord.

There is a kind of meditative purity to her interpretation, with great clarity and superb technique. Her insert note, very elegantly translated from Italian into English, is deeply thoughtful - indeed touching on the transcendental.

I just wanted to gush a bit about it here and may add more after further listenings - but (obviously) recommend it highly.

Bumping this up in hope of some reactions from anyone who's heard this disc....

[visualnickmos]

Who won? !

One needs only Glenn Gould, invho

[Pianorak]

One needs Glenn Gould, Igor Levitt and most definitely Beatrice Rana. IMNVHO.

[Belgrove]

kernelbogey - Beatrice Rana's disc is sublime. It's an individual and insightful interpretation, but without wilfulness or eccentricity. It sounds 'right', and has already repayed several repeat listenings.

[pastoralguy]

kernelbogey - Beatrice Rana's disc is sublime. It's an individual and insightful interpretation, but without wilfulness or eccentricity. It sounds 'right', and has already repayed several repeat listenings.

[BBMmk2]

Bumping this up in hope of some reactions from anyone who's heard this disc....

Thanks for bumping this up, I will play this later. Hoping it's on Spotify

[Pulcinella]

kernelbogey - Beatrice Rana's disc is sublime. It's an individual and insightful interpretation, but without wilfulness or eccentricity. It sounds 'right', and has already repayed several repeat listenings.

Quite the reverse observation here, I'm sorry to report, and I say this as an admirer of Gould!
Individual and insightful, yes, but wilful and somewhat eccentric too (imvho, of course!).
Listening now (Deezer/Sonos) and it's not a version I would particularly listen to again.
Too many little hiatuses in the playing (for my taste) that stop the flow.

[silvestrione]

kernelbogey - Beatrice Rana's disc is sublime. It's an individual and insightful interpretation, but without wilfulness or eccentricity. It sounds 'right', and has already repayed several repeat listenings.

I've just played it through, and agree whole-heartedly with this assessment. One of those performances where you're left thinking, not, what a player! but, what wonderful music, sublime music. My heart stopped more than once ( in the repeat of the first half of the magical Var.13, surely one of the most wonderful bits of music anywhere; in the amazing repeat of the aria at the end, of course)

[BBMmk2]

Thanks for bumping this up, I will play this later. Hoping it's on Spotify

Result! It's on Spotify!!

[pastoralguy]

Not being in the best of places just now, I've been listening a LOT to the Goldberg Variations recently as it provides a balm to my mental state. Having loved the Beatrice Rana version as well as Angela Hewitt's earlier version, I've ordered two new ones. The most recent Hewitt version and a Naxos disc by a pianist called Chen Pi-hsien, (30p from musicmagpie courtesy of Amazon), which gets good reviews in that particular boutique.

I wondered if there was any value in asking Mrs. PG to play them back to back but not telling me which is which. Mind you, two Goldberg's is an extremely demanding listen!

Now to read the posts on this thread.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I was going to write that I hope you move to a better place soon, pasto - but that doesn't sound at all like what I meant! I hope the sentiments come from behind the clumsy words

Chen Pi-Hhsien is a superb artist - one of the great but largely unsung pianists: I didn't know she'd recorded the Goldbergs

I was interested the other day when you posted your reactions to the Jeremy Denk recording a week or so ago. This was a disc that was reviewed on CD Review when it was first released: I was in the car headed for the local supermarket, and I thought "Ah - who needs another piano recording of the Goldbergs?" A few bars into one of the excerpts, and I was hooked, and for the remainder of the "article", I was sitting in my car in the supermarket car park, completely captivated by how Denk transformed the work into piano terms. I had to buy the disc, and I have listened to it many, many times in the years since. By contrast, it was Ms Hewitt's recording that was one of the many that made me think that I would never need another piano recording of the work.

Remarkable how a work as huge as this "adapts" itself to so many different "treatments" and readings, each appealing to different audiences to console, inspire, and enliven our moods as we need them.

Best Wishes.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ooh! I've just WIKIed the Chen Pi-hsien Goldbergs and discovered that it was a "Joyce Hatto recording"!