Goldberg Variations (Arr. for String Trio by Dmitry Sitkovet
Evil Penguin
CD
$16.99Feb 06, 2026
In Dmitry Sitkovetsky's transcription, Bach's Goldberg Variations are revealed in a new light: a refined dialogue between violin, viola and cello, where each voice breathes and listens to the others. TrioFenix delivers a strikingly clear interpretation, combining architectural rigour, expressive freedom, and sonic poetry. Backed by nearly twenty years of musical complicity, these three chamber musicians breathe new life into one of the masterpieces of the Baroque repertoire, in a version that is as vibrant as it is intimate.
Bach: Goldberg Variations & Chorale, "Jesu, Joy of Man's Des
Centaur Records
CD
$18.99Sep 06, 2019
On this new release, Lilia Boyadjieva presents a programme of works by J. S. Bach, including his famous Goldberg Variations. Born and educated in Sofia, Bulgaria, Lilia Boyadijeva completed her studies at the Moscow Conservatory "P. I. Tchaikovsky," with Professor T. D. Gutman. Her awards at international piano competitions include prizes at Senigallia (Italy - 1979), Vianna da Motta (Portugal - 1983), Maria Callas (Greece - 1985) and more. Lilia Boyadjieva pursues a brilliant soloist career mainly in Europe. Invited by prestigious Festivals (Montpellier, Auvers-sur-Oise, Sofia, Athens, Dublin) she performs in recitals as a soloist, with orchestras and with chamber music ensembles in various countries. Radio and television organizations in different countries often broadcast her concerts. Very appreciated for her teaching abilities, she has taught at the Sofia Musical Academy, in Athens and Paris (CNR, Schola Cantorum). She gives numerous master classes in Greece, France and the U.S.
After several years of intensive preparation and many live concerts, Swiss pianist Oliver Schnyder has recorded the Goldberg Variations. He has recorded the cycle two times; it was only the second time that the result met his expectations. Rare recording of the cycle on a Bösendorfer grand piano.
Vogt bring qualities of freshness and joie de vivre to the Goldbergs that have often been much less marked. He is not reverential and he has noted – correctly, surely – how entertaining the Variations are. This is a distinguished addition to the discography of the Goldberg Variations in all their glorious elegance.
- Gramophone
Vogt's feeling for the over-arching whole is impressive. He's not above a little 'guiding' either - sometimes drawing attention to detail in a way denied to Bach's harpsichord. But he's sparing in the use of the pedal and, like Schiff and Perahia, inclined to let his fingers sing wherever possible - to laugh, too.
J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations (arr. Robin O'Neill)
BIS
SACD
$21.99Oct 18, 2024
Bach's music has always attracted arrangers and orchestrators - such as Stokowski, Elgar and Busoni, to name just three. Regardless of it's original version, Bach's music has an expressive power, drama and architectural logic that lend themselves well to expanded orchestral sonorities. Bassoonist and conductor Robin O'Neill buried his head in the Goldberg Variations, which he had discovered through Glenn Gould's recordings, during the first months of the Covid lockdown. Soon after that, the idea of making an arrangement for orchestra began to obsess him as he began hearing instrumental and orchestral sonorities in the keyboard work. Since the main challenge was to reclothe the music without damaging the subtle intricacy of the piece, and after much thought and experimentation, O'Neill chose instruments that Bach himself would have recognized for the solo parts. His reinterpretation of the Goldberg Variations offers a mixture of full orchestral variations interspersed with concertante ones involving two, three or four solo instruments, at times close to St Matthew Passion-style writing. Completed during a difficult period, this arrangement was made, in the words of O'Neill, in the hope that it expresses the joy and solace that Bach's music gives both performer and listener.
April 25, 2025: Carnegie Hall has been sold out for months in anticipation of Yunchan Lim's return to perform Bach's Goldberg Variations. The whole world watched as a moment of musical history was made. 70 years earlier - and just a few blocks from Carnegie Hall - a 22-year-old Canadian called Glenn Gould made a recording of the Goldbergs which was also destined for legendary status. Decca Classics is now proud to present the next chapter in the history of this timeless music and an extraordinary young artist. 2 LP set.
Kit Armstrong Performs Bach's Goldberg Variations and Its Pr
C Major Entertainment
DVD · Blu-Ray
$16.49$32.99Save 50%Jul 28, 2017
When Kit Armstrong was only 14 , he overcame his mentor Alfred Brendel's reluctance to take on pupils. Brendel said ''He played so beautifully that I thought to myself, 'I have to make tiem for him.' It was a performance that really led you from the first to the last note.'' Soon Armstrong was winning international prizes both as pianists and as composer and was appearing as soloist at some of the world's foremost venues. At the Concertgebouw, Armstrong mesmerized his audience with Bach's monumental Goldberg Variations - preceded by earlier polyphonic variation masterpieces by William Byrd, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and John Bull. ''Enlightening and exhilarating'' (Revierpassagen). ''Armstrong's phenomenal recital was so exceptional that every attempt to describe it falls short'' (NRC).
This new recording of Józef Koffler’s arrangement of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations has been widely anticipated since Trevor Pinnock conducted the UK premiere at Wigmore Hall in 2019. The Goldberg Variations were still largely unfamiliar to the musical public when Józef Koffler completed his extraordinary arrangement –for flute, oboe, cor anglais, bassoon and strings –in 1938. Over eighty years on, the Goldberg Variations are ubiquitous. Bach’s encyclopedic marvel of digital gymnastics and musical invention is regularly performed and recorded. Koffler’s arrangement cleverly reimagines the work in a naturalistic and compelling way. In its second transatlantic musical collaboration, the Royal Academy of Music is joined by students from The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory in Toronto. The partnership with the Academy has produced five recordings with Trevor Pinnock, one with the late Oliver Knussen and one with Reinhold Friedrich in collaboration with The Juilliard School.
For his first appearance under the naïve label, the Chinese pianist Tianqi Du majestically embraces a monument for keyboard, the Goldberg Variations. His pianistic interpretation of Bach’s masterpiece affirms the principle of metamorphosis, always reinventing but never altering, emphasizing all the resources of the instrument. A compulsory piece for all keyboardists – and even other instrumentalists, if you count the many transcriptions they have undergone – the Goldberg Variations never sound the same. The voice rendered here by Tianqi Du – a young pianist taught and admired in his home country of China before studying with Meng-Chieh Liu at Boston’s New England Conservatory and now with Nicolas Hodges – is that of a dear, benevolent friend who always stood close by while he was growing up: “My encounter with the Goldberg Variations was like a musical compass that showed me the way,” he confides. “Bach has been a friend, a mentor and a savior in my hours of doubt and confusion.”
When this arrived in the mail, my first reaction was, “Oh no, here we go again; another Goldberg Variations by an artist I’ve never heard of before.” And after being so rattled by my grievous error regarding the matter of repeats in Daniel Pienaar’s recording, I had serious doubts about reviewing another Goldberg Variations ever again. Well, you know what they say about getting right back up on the horse after you’ve been thrown. Had I passed on this assignment out of fear, I’d have missed out on a truly extraordinary experience. For starters, forget that this is a recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. It’s a disc you should have purely for the velvet smoothness and silken beauty of Sachiko Kato’s tone as captured by the One Soul Studios engineers in New York’s Klavierhaus Hall. This is simply one of the most gorgeous reproductions of piano sound I’ve heard on disc.
Now, of course, this is a recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and not being one to be burned twice, I listened to Kato’s performance with undivided attention and followed the score dutifully. Here is what I can tell you. She takes the first-half repeats of each variation, but not the second-half ones. More’s the pity, because in many of the variations’ first halves, she adds some of her own embellishments that tickled me with delight. Kato is an extremely imaginative player, and I would have loved to hear her embellishments in second-half repeats.
Beyond the matter of repeats and her own embellishments, Kato’s readings of the variations are so perfectly realized in terms of tempos, phrasing, and discovery of detail, particularly in the left hand, that one marvels at the utter naturalness and fluency of the music. Notice I said “of the music,” not of Kato’s playing, because she plays with such a sense of effortlessness and ease that it’s as if the piano is having its own joyous conversation with Bach. Listen, for example to the happy mordents and smiling trill-and-mordents in the second half of Variation 5, executed with such perfection that even at Kato’s rapid velocity, not only can you hear the difference between them, your ear can discern the number of squiggles.
I’ve long admired Angela Hewitt, Murray Perahia, András Schiff, and Craig Sheppard in this music, but Sachiko Kato’s performance is truly special, and for piano versions, I think it may now be my favorite. This wonderful Japanese-born, Los Angeles-raised, Juilliard-trained artist has yet to gain much of a presence on record—Amazon, as well as her website, lists only two previous releases, both of modern music, which Kato champions—but she performs extensively throughout the U.S. and Japan. To everyone who embraces Bach’s Goldberg Variations on piano, this deserves to be heard and is urgently recommended.
A whole life, from birth to death, or the whole world, from the rising of the sun to its setting: nothing less than this is Bach's Goldberg Variations for saxophonist Peter Vigh. With the Aria at the beginning and at the end, a circle closes, and in between all sorts of things happen. Vigh orchestrated the monumental cycle for his Berlage Saxophone Quartet and has now recorded it on Super Audio album. The quartet tells of the ups and downs of existence with a sensitive sound: an experience that is as entertaining as it is deeply moving. Whether children playing (Variation 17) or a funeral procession (Variation 21): the associations that Bach's music evokes are intensely savored through the individual perspectives of the four Berlage artists. Ten different instruments are used and provide a colorful range that is second to none. And especially in the polyphonic parts, the work gains a new degree of transparency through the distribution among several players. To achieve this, the four Dutchmen went back to school: Guided by baroque specialist Walter van Hauwe, they intensively studied historical playing practice. And so one hears how surprising sounds with speaking articulation, elegant ornamentation technique and striking phrasing combine with the very highest pleasurable playing culture. With this new release, Lars Niederstrasser, Peter Vigh, Juani Palop and Eva van Grinsven once again demonstrate their extraordinary stylistic range.
For her second Warner Classics release, young Italian pianist Beatrice Rana turns to a pinnacle of the solo keyboard repertoire and a composer she has described as "my first love": Johann Sebastian Bach. Her interpretation of his epic Goldberg Variations bears out Le Monde's judgement that "Beatrice Rana certainly has nothing left to prove when it comes to technique, but what makes an impression are her calm maturity and her sense of architecture," and Gramophone's that she is "a fully developed artist of a stature that belies her tender years." Bach was the composer who most obsessed Beatrice Rana as a child, and in a recent interview with Pianist magazine, she confessed that it would be his music, and above all the Goldberg Variations, that she would choose if she had to devote her life to a single composer. As she said: "I'm very happy to be going back to Bach... It's best to avoid Bach in competitions... you can't expose yourself to be totally killed by the jury! But Bach is my first love; now I am allowed to play it in public and I'm really looking forward to that."
Naxos' so-called "house pianist" Jeno Jandó is on top form in Bach's Goldberg Variations. He takes after Glenn Gould's perky tempos, dry-point articulation, and blueprint clarity, but on his own terms. For starters, Jandó does not link up variations without pausing or adapt a common pulse to unify groups of variations, opting instead to treat each one as a separate entity. Furthermore, Jandó takes all of the repeats, including the rare one in the Aria Da Capo that Weissenberg and Gavrilov observe. He embellishes some repeats more than others do, or simply phrases differently on the second go-rounds, albeit not to Murray Perahia or András Schiff's elaborate specifications.
If Jandó doesn't set records for speed, scintillation, and absolute rhythmic steadiness in the cross-handed variations, they still manage to swing, with plenty of breathing room to boot. Jandó takes a harder-nosed look than usual at the minor-key variations, as if he weren't interested in the canon at the fifth's melodic profundity or the canon at the seventh's wrenching chromatic zingers. And next to the inner drama and extraordinary harmonic tension Perahia illuminates in the famous "black pearl" 25th Variation, Jandó is relatively reticent. He also tends to scale his dynamics between mezzo-forte and mezzo-piano, although this may result from the close, somewhat airless, though not unattractive microphone placement. All in all, Jeno Jandó's Goldbergs add up to a solid, recommendable bargain alternative to the reference versions listed above. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
Bach’s Goldberg Variations are one of the most multi-faceted variation cycles in music history: a theme of unparalleled beauty, a simple bass line as the basis for thirty variations full of richly melodic invention. Bach’s cosmos leads the listener through facets of human feeling into undremt-of breadth. Pianist Kemal Cem Yilmaz writes: “The musical works of J.S. Bach have now been part of my daily spiritual bread for over 25 years. The Inventions and Suites, the Preludes and Fugues, and, not least, the rich vocal works of this musical prophet of the modern age formed the stable foundation of my artistic character.” Yilmaz began studying with Daniel Vodovoz at the age of eight. Audiences were thrilled by his numerous public appearances as a child; already at that time, his playing was mature and inspiring. In 2002 he won first prize at the Turkish National Piano Competition in Eskisehir. Since then Yilmaz performs regularly as a soloist with the most renowned orchestras in Turkey.
Bach, Busoni: Goldberg Variations & Other Works / Chiyan Wong
Linn Records
CD
$15.99$20.99Save 25%Jan 22, 2021
Following his critically acclaimed debut Liszt Transfigured: Operatic Fantasies for Piano, which won the 40th Liszt Ferenc International Grand Prix du Disque in 2018, Chiyan Wong returns to record his second album for Linn. Alongside the piano music of Liszt, the music of Ferruccio Busoni has been a guiding light for the young, eclectic pianist. Here Chiyan combines Busoni’s kaleidoscopic arrangement of Bach’s famous Goldberg Variations, which celebrates the powerful sonority and range of the modern concert grand, with Bach’s timeless original. Chiyan’s ‘dazzling technical finish’ (Gramophone) and luxuriant sound are on full display in Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s famous Chaconne, a classic in the genre. Inversion, mirroring and variations are also idiomatic devices in Busoni’s Sonatina ‘in diem Nativitatis Christi MCMXVII and Chiyan’s own ‘composition etude’, Inversion of Variation 15 (Canone alla quinta), which complete this one-of-a-kind programme.
Imagining how Bach himself might have transformed the Goldberg Variations for a chamber group, Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque present a pioneering new arrangement of the Goldberg Variations by Chad Kelly. Employing a variety of instrumental combinations from a typical Bach ensemble of single strings, oboe, flute, bassoon, and harpsichord, these newly-crafted Goldbergs illuminate exquisite responses to the various historical genres inherent in Bach’s scores.
This beloved masterpiece was composed through a period of personal tumult for Bach; two unsuccessful job applications, the premature death of his son Gottfried, and criticism of his music in a prominent Hamburg publication. Bach’s outpouring of beauty in the Goldberg Variations has long captured audience’s imaginations - Chad Kelly, Rachel Podger, and her fleet Brecon Baroque preserve the work’s exquisite intricacy whilst adding breadth, texture and color to its emotional backdrop. This revisioning of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a perfect transformation of the work for the modern era.
“In the first thirty years of my career, I never wanted to play the Goldberg Variations. I had a strong relationship to Bach – singing mathematics – but did not feel any desire to contribute a further interpretation of this well-beloved work. This changed only when I decided to support the musical education in my son’s school. The aria from the Goldberg Variations was one of the first subjects, and the more I dedicated myself to the aria, the more I felt: this piece is a gold mine of vitality. This recording is the end point of a ten-year-long, personal healing process. For me, this is a reason for great joy – and a moment of hope, the hope that this music brings the listeners as much healing and comprehension as it gave me.” (Jimin Oh-Havenith) Jimin Oh-Havenith’s piano playing is characterized by an exceptional sonority and faithful-ness to the text. Her warm sound, which is always embedded within the rhythmic structure, lets the music come alive in all its richness. The synchronicity of sound and rhythm, not arbitrary changes in tempo and dynamics, inform the clarity of her interpretation, as in, for example, her recording of Beethoven’s op. 111, his last sonata. Jimin Oh-Havenith was born in Seoul, South Korea. In 1979 she began piano studies with Jin-Woo Chung at the Seoul National University. From 1981 to 1984 she continued her studies with Aloys Kontarsky at the Cologne College of Music. In addition to her concert activities as a soloist and radio and recordings, she also performed in a piano duo with her late husband Raymund Havenith (†1993). Jimin Oh-Havenith taught at the Mainz College of Music and at the College of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main. Since 2013 she has again been active as a soloist.
The J.S. Bach Goldberg Variations certainly need no introduction, as they have long been viewed as being among the greatest works of the entire keyboard literature. Baroque specialist James Richman delivers this masterpiece in sensitive, compelling performances. James Richman is Artistic Director/Conductor of Concert Royal and the Dallas Bach Society. He is a prominent harpsichordist and fortepianist, as well as one of today’s leading conductors of Baroque music and opera. The first musician since Leonard Bernstein to graduate Harvard, Juilliard, and the Curtis Institute of Music, James Richman studied conducting with Max Rudolf and Herbert Blomstedt, piano with Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Rosina Lhevinne and Rudolf Serkin, and harpsichord with Albert Fuller and Kenneth Gilbert. He holds a degree in the History of Science magna cum laude from Harvard College.
