October 10, 2018

  • Hearing Goldberg With New Ears

     

    Bach : Goldberg Variations
    Wolfgang Rubsam, lute-harpsichord
    Naxos 8.573921
    Total Time:  78:24
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    The music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is filled with the core stylistic expressions of the Baroque Period.  For many of us who grew up in the late 20th Century, this music went from being performed on the instruments of our time to a burgeoning exploration of recreating, or using, instruments of the Baroque to try and hear how the music might have sounded at the time.  The argument over whether period or contemporary instruments are necessary continues to be an issue among musicologists.  What can happen is that with music that has become familiar we might become accustomed to the way it sounds.  Wanda Landowska’s classic recording on harpsichord gave us the chance to hear the Goldberg Variations on a “period” instrument at a time when it was mostly performed on piano.  Piano versions abound in the catalog with Glenn Gould’s more clinical, and cerebral, performance revealing much about the inner workings of Bach’s lines and harmony.  This new release gives us a chance to experience this music on another type of instrument of the period, the lute-harpsichord.

    The lautenwerck was a more mellow keyboard instrument that allowed more cantabile style playing.  It has gut strings and some of the strings are used to add sympathetic vibration.  Keith Hill is one of the modern makers of this instrument and constructed the one used on this new recording by Wolfgang Rubsam.  Over the past few years, Rubsam has been recording Bach’s keyboard works, albeit on piano, to great critical acclaim.  Here he then turns to this unique keyboard, the one preferred by Bach in his later years.

    The Goldberg Variations were published by Bach in 1741 who paid for it himself.  After a moving “Aria”, Bach begins one of the greatest explorations of variation technique in music.  Thirty variations explore the bass line, itself a rather unique choice, and the work concludes with a repeat of the opening aria.  What makes the collection important is that it gives the performer an opportunity to learn and explore a number of Baroque forms (canons, fughettas, a final quodlibet) and different intervals and a host of the sorts of dances popular common to the Baroque suite (French overture, corrente, gigue, minuet, passepied, polonaise, sarabande).  Some of the music also has that quality of an “exercise” that expands upon the keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti.  Thus, it is a grouping of music that has German, French, and Italian styles to discover.  Some of this is lost on a modern listener who is unfamiliar with how unique these regional styles were and how people at the time would recognize this far more than we could today without some guidance.

    The goal of Rubsam’s performance is to help us experience this music anew.  The transparency of the instrument thus helps do this from the start.  The best way to describe this is as if the work was being performed on a lute with its more distinct ability to iterate each pitch in the line.  As such then, the ornamentations that occur also then help provide a clarity of line that is a hallmark of this music.  Rubsam also follows period practice here by adding ornamentations and appropriate variations within repeated sections.  The extended time allowed on CD gives him room to do so. What is striking is that the right and left hand lines are so crystal clear, but the sound of the instrument still allow there to be a little resonance that warms the music.  This is essentially what appealed to Bach and which help Rubsam’s more singing style in this new release.  Often, Bach can be performed such that it feels distant, or “cold”, and that is gone from this performance.  Each of the variations, and some are obviously more interesting than others, really does make on pay attention and feels like more than just an exercise.  This is in part to Rubsam’s style of playing here and the way the instrument is responding to it.

    At nearly 80 minutes, this is a rather full album of variation technique and again the piece itself is one more for study than one you might sit and listen to, but it is consistently engrossing and Rubsam’s recording will certainly be one worth adding to the collection of Bach aficionados.  By studying the way this music is approached on different keyboards we get a sense for the technical compositional skill Bach used.  How we appreciate the sheer pleasure of listening to this unfold is going to take some getting used to, but this new release will certainly have much to recommend repeated play.

    Sound quality is quite beautiful and the performance, recorded at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Valparaiso, Indiana, is captured well on this release.  Rubsam has recorded the Well-Tempered Klavier on the lute-harpsichord and that may be an even more revealing set of pieces to hear how the instrument’s response assists clarity in fugal writing.