Bach: The Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould album)

The late great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould made two significant and highly-acclaimed recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the first in 1955 when he was just 22, the second a quarter of a century later in 1981 when he was nearing the end of his life.

It has been nearly four decades since Canadian pianist Glenn Gould recorded his last studio album, Bach: The Goldberg Variations. Since then, he has become the most famous, if controversial, interpreter of Bach’s iconic score and his 1981 recording of it became his most celebrated.

30 variations
What are the Goldberg Variations? The work itself consists of 30 variations, starting with a single ‘Aria’. After transforming the music over the course of an hour, using different time signatures, textures, and harmonies, the beautiful first aria returns, with a completely different feel from the first hearing.

In print, the Goldbergs (Goldberg Variations) have a quasi-legendary status, a hallmark of technical difficulty. I was perusing the score and it doesn’t look terribly intricate for what’s possibly a majority of the variations – certainly less than Bach’s 3- or 4-part works.

He often hummed or sang while he played, and his audio engineers were not always successful in excluding his voice from recordings. Gould claimed that his singing was unconscious and increased in proportion to his inability to produce his intended interpretation from a given piano.

Deceased (1932–1982)
Glenn Gould/Living or Deceased

Consisting of an opening aria and then 30 different variations on it, the Goldberg Variations — named after its first performer Johann Gottlieb Goldberg and published in 1741 — is Bach’s most popular keyboard work, partly because it isn’t laden with the academic formality of the Well-Tempered Clavier, and covers so …

The Goldberg variations were first published in 1741, when Bach about 56 years old (in the last decade of his life). They’re named as such because a man named Johann Goldberg, a super skilled keyboardist, was likely the first one to perform it. The Goldberg Variations were originally written for harpsichord.

The hand crossing ones are the most difficult, although there are certain editions which negate the hand crossings and make for easier playing (even Andras Schiff “cheats” in Variation 23!)

Glenn Gould was a complicated man. He didn’t like to practice; instead he’d prepare for concerts mentally, running the piece over and over, playing with imaginary fingers. When he was a little baby, it was said that instead of crying, he would hum. He had perfect pitch and could read music before he could read words.

Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist who retired from a flourishing concert career in 1964 to become a recording artist best known for his Bach interpretations, died yesterday in Toronto General Hospital. Gould suffered a severe stroke last Monday, two days after his 50th birthday.

The length of a performance of the Goldberg Variations can therefore vary drastically: Gould’s 1955 recording is 38 minutes 34 seconds long, while his reconsidered, slower 1981 version (see below) is 51:18.

Bach: The Goldberg Variations became Columbia’s bestselling classical album and earned Gould an international reputation. The record is now in the catalog of Sony Classical Records .

Gould often had trouble finding a piano he liked; the Variations were recorded on a Steinway piano he had acquired in 1955 (model CD 19), which had been shipped around the northeastern United States for his concerts. The third variation (excerpt) is a canon at the Unison. Problems playing this file?

Sales were “astonishing” for a classical album: it was reported to have sold 40,000 copies by 1960, and had sold more than 100,000 by the time of Gould’s death in 1982. In 1981, a year before his death, Gould made a new recording of the Goldberg Variations, sales of which exceeded two million by 2000.