The Goldberg Variations podcast

Although I took piano lessons for about eight years from elementary school through high school, and I learned a few Bach pieces, I never attempted even the aria from The Goldberg Variations. The first time I can recall paying attention to the work was seeing a Youtube of Glenn Gould performing them. I bought a CD of Keith Jarrett performing the Variations on harpsichord. Then, I found Gould’s 1955 piano recording among several hundred LPs owned by the mother of a colleague. Recently, I watched a couple of Youtubes on the life of Gould that emphasized the transformative and controversial nature of his recordings.

In the past few days, I binge-watched the 15 episodes of the 30 Bach Goldberg Variations podcast directed and narrated by Lowry Yankwich. He interviews nearly 30 people, mostly musicians, about what the Variations mean to them. At the end of each episode is a performance of 1-4 of the variations, with images of the scores. The episodes are chock full of stories about Bach and the challenges he faced as a musician and composer. For me, what was particularly interesting was learning about the harmonic structure of the aria and each of the 30 variations. For example, I didn’t know that every third variation is written in the structure of a canon (think “Row, row, row your boat”). The interviews dissect the voices in each variation, their contrapuntal relationships, the chord progressions and the tempi.
Bach didn’t write piano music because the piano hadn’t yet been invented. The Goldbergs were written for harpsichord. Some of the variations were written for dual manual instruments, which had two keyboards, one above the other. In this way, the performer could use the same part of the keyboard with each hand. The Jarrett recording was made using a dual manual instrument. This makes all the more impressive the piano performances by Gould and others, playing rapidly and cleanly while the hands cross and fingers interdigitate.
Following the scores along with the performances also brought home the challenges of reading and writing the music. I’m used to reading and writing scores for treble and bass clef. A few years ago, I had to transcribe parts for viola, which were in alto clef. In Bach’s score, the lines shift between clefs, sometimes within the same bar!
If you have any interest in classical music, I recommend the 30 Bach Goldberg Variations podcasts. I’ve posted a link to the first one below. You can easily find all 15 on Youtube. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PPdCLK3FM0