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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
October 7, 2024
According to the 1754 Obituary (commonly known as the Nekrolog), Johann Sebastian Bach "needed only to have heard any theme to be aware — it seemed in the same instant — of almost every intricacy that artistry could produce in the treatment of it".
Those of us not blessed with Bach's perception can, however briefly, feel an inkling of it on the return of the Aria which opens his Clavier-Übung bestehend in einer ARIA mit versheidenen Veroenderungenvos Clavicimbal mit 2 Manualen ("Clavier exercise consisting of an ARIA with several variations for a harpsichord with 2 manuals"), more commonly known (however inaccurately) as the "Goldberg" Variations, BWV988.
For at that moment the aria is transformed and all the possibilities mined by the composer are revealed to the listener. (Parenthetically, I can only think of two other similar examples: the variation finale of Beethoven's Op.109 piano sonata and Frederic Rzewski's The People United Can Never Be Defeated.)
What is, in some ways, even more remarkable is that, for the previous hour or so (dependent on precisely how many repeats are observed: Glenn Gould's legendary 1955 recording takes just over 38 minutes in toto) Bach has been giving us variations not so much on the melody of the aria, but more on its ground bass, the Fundamental-noten as Bach called them, of the first eight bars of the aria.
Moreover, this bass line was, as Graeme Skinner has observed, "a common property among composers of Bach's era and earlier" and, as Thurston Dart noted, can be found in Henry Purcell's Ground in Gamut, Z645. It is fairly unlikely that Bach knew the Purcell work, but he was almost certainly familiar with Handel's Chaconne avec 62 variations, HWV442, also based upon that same eight note bass line. (And, given the length of his domicile in London, it is quite possible that Handel was familiar with the Purcell.)
On Monday evening a packed Phillip T Young Recital Hall was treated to a mesmerising performance of the "Goldbergs" given by Minsoo Sohn.
As what one might describe as an amuse-bouche, Sohn opened with the Prelude and Fughetta in G, BWV902.
Here Sohn displayed a crisp yet warm tone, with the fughetta (an early version of the fugue in the same key from Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier) being quite puckish.
The Goldbergs followed without pause and I was immediately given the impression that Sohn was letting us know that, fine though the previous work undoubtedly was, now we were going to find out what Bach was capable of when he really tried.
The Aria itself was slow, but never dragged, thoughtful and with a sense of the exploratory, the left hand clearer than one often hears.
I believe, even though I would not actually stake my life on it, that Sohn observed every single repeat and imbued each repeat with sufficiently different nuance that their presence never felt de trop, although, to be perfectly honest, this is one of those few works that invariably feels too short and I tend to mildly resent any missed repeat.
It would be of little interest to discuss every single variation, but I should note that Sohn was very quick in the faster ones and perhaps just a little steely-fingered. But then similar criticisms have been levelled at Glenn Gould and it would take a far braver man than I to cast aspersions at the Blessed Glenn in his signature work.
What cannot be denied is that those quicker variations were full of life and rhythmically vital, as evidenced by the fact that looking around the hall one could observe many in the audience nodding their heads or tapping their feet to the music. Some, like variations one, twenty-two and twenty-four, fairly danced; others, such as variation seven were more playful. All sparkled.
The slower variations were, on occasion, very slow, and always thoughtful. Several of them were distinguished by a (presumably unmarked) tenuto before the final note, as if Sohn could hardly bear to part with them.
The variations are grouped in threes, with the last of each group being a canon at increasingly wide intervals: so variation three is a canon at the unison, variation six a canon at the second and so forth until variation twenty-seven is at the ninth.
But Bach had a joke up his sleeve: whereas according to this scheme, variation thirty, the final variation, would be a canon at the tenth, instead we have the quodlibet which, while still employing the ground bass, contrapuntally weaves together melodic fragments from (it has been estimated) as many as five German folk-songs, although only two have been positively identified.
Texts are to be found handwritten on one of the copies printed at the time (the Goldbergs being one of the few works of Bach published during his lifetime), allegedly written by Johann Christian Kittel, one of Bach's last pupils.
One melody has the text "Ich bin so lang nicht bei dir gewest, Ruick her!" (I have been so long away from your place, but now I am here!), the other, more prosaically, "Kraut und Rüben haben mich vertrieben" (Cabbage and turnips have driven me away). They have a similar effect on me.
In Sohn's hands the quodlibet provided a glorious apotheosis to the variations. He followed it with a brief, but pregnant, pause before the Aria da capo once again cast its spell, but this time radiant with the awareness of all the wonders to which it had given life, thanks to the supreme genius of Bach.
I believe it is a measure of the power and depth of Sohn's performance that, although this is a work I can seldom get enough of, to the extent that I usually listen to it every few days, in the week-and-a-half since, I have not felt the need to hear it again.
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