Jean-Luc Ho - Bach: Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 (2023) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

“Although it is certainly part of a performer’s task both to nurture a special relationship with a work and to give the public a chance to enjoy it, the first thing that you need to do is to separate the work from its history.

Bach was fifty-five in 1741, when he published the work described as a Clavier-Übung made up of an ARIA with a number of variations for a harpsichord with two manuals.

There is no point trying to find anything English in the English Suites and, in the same way, calling the work the Goldberg Variations implicitly has the effect of making us wonder whether a fourteen-year-old by the name of Johann Gottfried Goldberg would have been capable of playing such a difficult score. The name given to the work pinpointed just how technically difficult it is (and it really is, although that does not define the piece) and played a part in making it what it always seemed destined to become: a legendary, mythical, almost unreal piece of music.

In concert, the Variations are something that should be watched as well as listened to. The work requires invention from the performer’s fingers and incessant virtuosity in the exploration of the keyboards; it is a challenge for both pianists and harpsichordists as well as a treat for the audience. This was the first time that Bach used these hand-crossing techniques, hammered chords, chromatic slides and rapid arpeggios in such an assertive - almost extreme - way on the harpsichord, and here he explores the independence of the manuals as never before.

You need quite some harpsichord to perform a piece of this kind - an old companion which gives you a hunger for playing them and then feeds you as you do. Ten years ago, I began racking my brains, wondering how I might go about finding “the” harpsichord for Bach. To cut a long story short, while I did come across the qualities I needed - balance, dynamics and tonal structure - I never seemed to find them all together in one instrument.

The harpsichord with which I am most familiar is a two-manual French harpsichord in the Goujon style, made by the harpsichord maker Émile Jobin in 1983. It is in a French style and, although Bach never heard or touched an instrument of this kind, it is the work of a modern harpsichord maker who kept the organ and the desire for polyphony in mind - rather an unusual sort of Frenchman, you might say.”

Tracklist:
CD1
1.01. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Aria
1.02. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 1. a 1 Clav.
1.03. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 2. a 1. Clav.
1.04. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 3. Canone all Unisuono a 1 Clav.
1.05. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 4. a 1 Clav.
1.06. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 5. a 1 o vero 2 Clav.
1.07. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 6. Canone alla Seconda a 1 Clav.
1.08. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 7. a 1. o vero 2 Clav. (al tempo di Giga)
1.09. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 8. a 2 Clav.
1.10. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 9. Canone alla Terza. a 1 Clav.
1.11. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 10. Fugetta. a 1 Clav.
1.12. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 11. a 2 Clav.
1.13. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 12. Canone alla Quarta.
1.14. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 13. a 2 Clav.
1.15. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 14. a 2 Clav.
1.16. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 15. andante. Canone alla Quinta. a 1 Clav.

CD2
2.01. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 16. a 1 Clav. Ouverture
2.02. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 17. a 2 Clav.
2.03. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 18. Canone alla Sexta. a 1 Clav.
2.04. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 19. a 1 Clav.
2.05. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 20. a 2 Clav.
2.06. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 21. Canone alla Settima.
2.07. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 22. a 1 Clav. alla breve
2.08. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 23. a 2 Clav.
2.09. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 24. Canone all Ottava a 1 Clav.
2.10. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 25. a 2 Clav.
2.11. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 26. a 2 Clav.
2.12. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 27. Canone alla Nona. a 2 Clav.
2.13. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 28. a 2 Clav.
2.14. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 29. a 1 o vero 2 Clav.
2.15. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Variatio 30. a 1 Clav. Quodlibet.
2.16. Les variations Goldberg, BWV 988 Aria da Capo e Fine


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