Entry Two

Goldberg Variations: Holy Grail of Piano Repertoire

Every now and then, I will look through my library of scores and reminisce about the pieces I have played. Albeit the repertoire is seemingly infinite, but I certainly treasure the times in which I have worked tirelessly to prepare my favorite works for performance. Bach’s French Overture and Italian Concerto spring to mind not only because those were two of my favorite projects, but also because they are closely connected to the very core of this blog post’s topic: the “Goldberg Variations” (or, as we classical purists call it, “Aria with 30 Diverse Variations”). Those three works are all part of what is known as the “Clavier-Übung” — a four-volume collection of Bach’s keyboard compositions that were published during his lifetime. I have always been quite a stickler for authenticity and staying true to the composer’s original intentions (you can imagine all the blue Henle urtexts I have), so I suppose you could attribute my purist attitude to my interest in the Goldberg Variations since those were published during the composer’s lifetime anyway. However, I could never really listen to the Variations in the work’s entirety before. Every time I started listening to a recording of it, I would either doze off or tune out by variation 11 or somewhere around that. There are 30 of them, by the way. Sure, I jumped straight to random variations just to get a sense of what I ought to expect later, but I felt nothing. And why should I? It is as if I asked someone who has never seen “Schindler’s List” to jump straight to the later scenes on DVD; that person’s reactions would be severely limited in the absence of context and character/plot exposition.

No matter how hard I tried listening, I could never get into the Goldberg Variations. Maybe that was the problem; I tried too hard to listen. I was looking for something even though I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to see. Eventually, I grew out of that phase and looked elsewhere for musical inspiration. The Goldberg Variations remained out of the picture for many years… until May 2nd, 2024. On that day, I had the privilege of watching Mr. Vikingur Ólafsson performing that monumental work. Now you’re probably wondering, “Why on earth would you buy a concert ticket to see a performance of something you failed to appreciate for years?” A couple reasons. First, I love Ólafsson’s recordings and especially his own piano transcriptions. I’m listening to his recording of his own arrangement of Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum” as I write this. Second, I felt the need to force myself to listen to the Goldberg Variations in-person, in a concert hall, with zero distractions, with no exiting. And that happened. I waited in my seat as the remaining spectators entered the concert hall. During those few minutes before the show, I accepted the fact that I was there in my seat and will stay there for roughly 90 more minutes. I had a long day of work beforehand, and I was kind of expecting that I would fall asleep in the middle of the performance. Of course I was hoping that wouldn’t happen, but I was ready for it. Finally, the lights dimmed and the concert series presenter gave a brief introduction. After some housekeeping reminders for concert etiquette, he closed his speech by saying something along the lines of, “Once I walk off, there will be a noticeable pause before Mr. Ólafsson comes onto the stage for his performance. And the big reason for that… is that I need time to get to my seat.” Everyone laughed, but at that moment, I knew I was in for a real treat.

The moment Ólafsson played the first notes of that opening aria, I immediately disregarded any memories of what I thought the piece sounded like, based on my ill-fated listening attempts in the past. I was there in every moment, absorbing each variation anew. I was lucky to get an amazing seat so I could see his hands and his wizardry at the piano. And wow — there are myriad techniques required to execute a successful performance of the Goldberg Variations. Listening to and watching Ólafsson’s playing in-person is jaw-dropping, but… even luckier for me, the spectator next to me was following along with a blue Henle urtext of this music! Whenever the pianist played something crazy, I peeked at my neighbor’s score and what I saw was even crazier. Techniques galore — hand-crossing, double sixths, double thirds, alternating notes, etc. Forget Hanon exercises, I want my students to play through the Goldberg Variations for their technical development! Seriously though, the techniques and skill that are required for such a monumental work like this are off the charts. Beyond that, it must take some god-like mental strength to perform this 80-minute thing. Yes, that’s right — eighty (80) minutes; or, one hour and twenty minutes. Nonstop. What if the pianist plays a variation out of order? If he did, then would he eventually go back to the one he skipped or would he continue? What if the pianist forgets to take one (of the many) repeats? What if he has a memory slip? What if, what if, what if. I never once checked my watch, nor did I once try to count which variation number he was playing. As a matter of fact, I did not want to know. I knew there were 30 in total, but the whole time, I constantly begged that the performance not be approaching its conclusion. When Ólafsson played the Aria da Capo, it felt as if nothing happened. I transcended into an unknown realm of musical heavens, and the return of that aria brought me back to the present moment. I was still in my seat in that concert hall, with zero distractions, and I just finished listening to the Goldberg Variations in the work’s entirety. Wow.

That is something to check off the must-listen-to “bucket list” for us classical music aficionados, but in the grand scheme of things that is certainly an unfair assessment. If listening to the Goldberg Variations is—rather, was—hard enough for me, then I can’t begin to imagine how much more difficult it is to play it on stage. If we continue up the tiers of this logic, then surely it must be impossible to COMPOSE this music. Just like how listeners are impressed by a musicians’ execution of their performances, the musicians themselves are even more impressed by how such music is created. Take that concept, apply it to my awe of Vikingur Ólafsson’s performance and multiply it with my awe of the Goldberg Variations as a composition itself… and the product is this blog post: “Goldberg Variations: Holy Grail of Piano Repertoire.”