I was highly impressed by and still very much relish my time
spent with Daniel-Ben Pienaar’s Mozart’s complete Piano Sonatas
on AV 2209 (see review).
Fans of this set will find all of this promise further fulfilled
in this Goldberg Variations, though as a reviewer it
would have been an easier task to welcome slightly less well-trodden
repertoire. Pienaar’s Bach is magnificent and, to a point, individual,
but does it really stand out in such a crowded field?
Daniel-Ben Pienaar poses as many questions as he provides answers
in his deeply considered and well written booklet notes for
this release. He doesn’t point to specific influences with regard
to his interpretations in this great keyboard work, but develops
ideas on its place and time both in the present, as well as
the alliances formed between the circumstantial and the timeless
– qualities and values inherent in the music itself, and the
ways in which these can be approached and adapted by players
over time.
This is a probing intellectual interpretation which on occasion
displays dazzling feats of speed, but which is more often a
more introverted exploration of the piece. It is almost as if
Pienaar is playing for his own satisfaction, and leaving it
up to us to decide whether we want to listen and take the journey
with him. The compact timing reflects brisk tempi at times,
but the unhurried feel of the playing and a minimum of ornamentation
also allows a highly selective observation of repeats to remain
a credible choice. Pienaar doesn’t work much with ‘variation
within variations’, so there is no sense we are being cheated
out of colourful technical insights and improvisational touches
by not hearing certain bars come around for a second time.
Comparisons can be made ad nauseam, but looking at another
recent take on the Goldberg Variations by Nick van Bloss
on the Nimbus Alliance label (see review)
shows how personality shades identical music into fascinatingly
different manifestations. Bloss is the more extrovert of the
two, seeking wit in the music and cheekily expressing it with
effects like an occasional extra octave wallop in the bass.
This ‘vibe’ turns his performance into more of a public experience
– no less well considered than Pienaar’s, but introducing Bach
to the bustle and language of the street: the call of market
traders and the revving of motors. Bloss’s Bach isn’t rough
and ready, but is easily the more resistant to external knocks
and blows, and in this way is more of a challenge to Glenn Gould’s
1955 Goldberg Variations, the recording which gave the
work and its performer such a remarkable hit status at that
time.
This is not to say Daniel-Ben Pienaar’s recording is weak-willed
and softly undemonstrative, but there is a gentler side to his
playing – perhaps also a side-effect of a rather rounded piano
sound – which brings out the warmth in the heart of the music
rather than its big venue street-cred. There is bounce and life
where Bach demands it, in the first variation for instance,
and this sets the pace for the first grouping of variations
which concludes with a rousing Variatio 4. Extremes of
speed are a feature of some variations, and Variatio 5 is
the first such example, acting as little more than a prelude
to Variatio 6. Pienaar’s sensitivity to Bach’s dance
style is demonstrated in a Giga which barely touches
the floor, so light is his touch on the keyboard. The second
grouping of variations has its finale in a robust performance
of the Variatio 10 Fughetta. Central to the next group
is the expressive Variatio 13, in which the little inner
rubati which Pienaar uses make the performance seem that
much more reflective and yes, introverted. The sound appears
almost to want to stay within the case of the piano, rather
than broadcast to the last row of an invisible audience. This
is not to say the playing is timid, but you could equally imagine
this as a clavichord performance. Variatio 14 blows away
the mood created in a horizontal shower of sparkling notes,
again making it a sort of prelude to the gently eloquent lines
of Variatio 15, which concludes another ‘block’ within
Pienaar’s structuring of the piece.
The conjoining of variations is a feature of a slow, almost
tentative sounding Variatio 20, which serves as a launching
point for an arguable too swift and brutal Variatio 21,
which goes at a speed too fast for our minds to keep up. The
expressive highlights of Variatio 21, 22 and 25 are
all done marvellously, though without extremes of slowness or
attempts to seek too far beyond Bach’s notes beyond what is
already so miraculous on the page. Pienaar does dive for pearls,
but not in a disproportionate sense – no need for extra breathing
apparatus, though the atmosphere is breathtaking. He writes
of the ‘return home’ of the Quodlibet in the way that
“the use of folk songs suggests quite literally a return to
shared ancestral roots.” In this way the final repeat of the
Aria is more of a coda and a release, the feeling of
which is palpably expressed by Daniel Ben-Pienaar.
As a bonus to the Goldberg Variations we are given a
continuous passacaglia version of the Fourteen Canons BWV
1087, which are based on the first eight bass notes of the
Aria from the Goldberg Variations. I’ve been intrigued
by these little gems for a while now, but while Pienaar’s more
lively moments are good you have to get used to his overly straight
opening and an occasional over-prominence of the bass line in
places. If you want to discover these fascinating canons have
a listen to the Hänssler Bach Edition Musikalisches
Opfer CD 92.133 which, along with the canons BWV 1072-78
is the version which convinced me that J.S. Bach was one of
the first minimalist composers, even to the point of momentarily
confounding our reviewer.
Pienaar’s programme concludes with a lovely prayer-like performance
of Bist du bei mir from Bach’s Anna Magdalena Notebook,
the source of the Aria from the Goldberg Variations,
or at least where it sees its first appearance in Bach’s manuscripts.
To conclude, this is a superbly expressive and atmospheric recording
of the Goldberg Variations. One may not quite agree with
the occasional extremes of tempo, but there is little doubting
the jigsaw-puzzle accuracy and attention to detail with which
Daniel-Ben Pienaar has formed his shaping of this masterpiece.
Subsequent to my review of the Mozart sonatas I was contacted
with regard to the piano sound, which one commentator found
rather ‘harsh, full of reverb, somewhat lacking in definition’.
I’m still quite happy with the sound quality of this, though
I partially take the point about the reverb and definition.
This Bach was recorded at the same location and the reverb is
less by comparison; the instrument that touch closer to the
microphones, something which can make all the difference. It’s
perhaps not quite ‘demonstration’ piano sound with a little
more mid-range bloom than makes for perfection, but is still
very good.
Dominy Clements
Daniel-Ben Pienaar (piano) 
