February 9: The Goldberg Variations (BWV 988); Vikingur Olafsson, piano

A new standard recording of a landmark

Years ago, I was sitting in a medical gown when my doctor introduced himself, looked at my chart, and said, ‘Ah, Mr. Goldfine, one of the Goldberg variations.’ It broke the ice with me, but would likely have left most of his patients puzzled. Did he know that I’d like his Borsht Belt schtick, or was he feeling anticipatory smugness that I might become confused? He then told me he was writing a book on integrated medicine that would make him “a successor to Goethe.” Everyone has so much mishegas.

But let’s talk about Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a piece that Glenn Gould brought to the public imagination in his 1955 debut recording. These Goldbergs were brilliant, blazingly fast, and hyper-articulated, and launched Gould’s superstar career. Sixty years later, you can select from over 600 streaming versions, and good luck covering all that. (Come back in 2025 for my blog, ‘Two Years of Goldbergs’.)

This piece truly lives up to the hype, and offers worlds of discoveries. For what it’s worth, Bach wrote the piece for an insomniac Count who employed a 14 year old keyboard prodigy named Goldberg to comfort him with music during his sleeplessness. (Goldberg himself would be dead at 29 from tuberculosis; another note: despite what you might infer from his name, he was baptized.)

Today I will feature the extraordinary 2023 recording by the Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson. I was lucky to see him perform the work this week at Carnegie Hall. I’ve been blessed to have seen about a thousand concerts in my lifetime, and this one was among the finest.

Vikingur brings a refined elegance to the work. (Just look at the guy.) I’m egregiously projecting here, but his performance creates the ambiance of a chilly room with sunlight beaming through the window. These are your Goldbergs for walking through a birch forest, the snow crunching under your boots, a brisk wind reddening your cheeks. (If I knew he was from Phoenix, I doubt I’d have the same reaction.)

But there really is something beautifully subdued in his playing. It reminds me of the cymbal work of the jazz drummer Brian Blade — even when it’s loud, it’s soft. This paradox elicits feelings of comfort, and communicates almost a maternal sense of safety. Somehow, these technical choices add up to a sense of expanse, and for that reason these Goldbergs feel more narrative than any other I’ve heard. A song of birth precedes youthful exuberance, which develops into adolescent questioning; midlife angst resolves to a beatific ending, and we are delivered back home to God. (Insert your own eschatology if ‘God’ doesn’t work).

It’s profound stuff — for me, Vikingur transcends both Gould’s youthful vivaciousness and elderly languidness. (While I haven’t listened to 600 other versions, I can also recommend the recent recordings by Igor Levit, Fazil Say, and the half-improvised performances by Dan Tepfer.)

Of course, you should take the full journey on your own, but here are many highlights from Vikingur’s recording:

The famous aria opens at just the right pace:

The fifth variation is the first blazing movement:

There are hidden pairs of variations throughout the work; one example is the eleventh variation’s downward scale foreshadowing the 23rd:

11th:

23rd:

The trills Vikingur plays in the 14th are like pillowed jackhammers. This is the essence of the soft/loud paradox in his playing. He brings out so much melody:

Only three of the 30 variations are in a minor key, and they all slay. The final moments of the 15th feel like dropping snowflakes, despite the ascending tones:

The 25th variation is the longest by far (in Vikingur’s version). This is our narrator’s crisis of mind, body, and spirit. The joyfulness and exuberance is gone, no more playful snowball fights. Instead, we’re left with solitary and contemplative and aching. This movement constantly steers from harmonic resolution throughout its nine minutes, it’s all missed connections and wandering — here’s the ending:

We exit that grave setting — maybe something good happened traveling through the darkness — and reach the exuberant big chords and final sprint of the 29th:

And then the valedictory swan song of the 30th. Here’s the ending, the last note is held for almost 15 seconds — this was so powerful in concert:

The reprise of the Aria is taken at a slower pace and even more delicately than the opening. We reminiscence of childhood, and transition with grace into the unknown silence:

Vikingur ended the concert without an encore, telling the audience that the reprise of the Aria was already an encore. The only thing that could follow it was the first variation, and then we would be there all night. He was right, and it was perfect.