Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750)
Goldberg Variations BWV 988 (1741)
Claudio Arrau (piano)
Rec. 1942, venue not stated
PRISTINE AUDIO PAKM086 [79:01]
Claudio Arrau played all Bach’s keyboard works, first giving them in a series of twelve recitals in 1935. And at the time of his death in 1991 he was considering recording them all. However, his actual recorded Bach legacy is comparatively small: some Inventions and Partitas, the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue – and this set of the Goldbergs. It has a curious history, set out in the brief sleevenote for this issue, from which I am drawing. Arrau made the recording in 1942 for RCA, following a successful recital. However, he agreed to delay its release so as not to compete with Wanda Landowska’s new recording. It then sat in the vaults. Arrau transferred to CBS (and later to Philips), so it was not issued until 1988. Now it has been remastered by Andrew Rose for Pristine Classics.
I shall start with the recorded sound. Piano sound is notoriously hard to capture accurately. Nevertheless, although this obviously does not have the full richness of a modern recording, or of Arrau’s work for Philips, you would not think it dated back to 1942. I would have placed it in the mid-1960s. It is easy to listen to, and only the occasional lack of resonance on high notes really stuck out for me. My ears soon adjust to any reasonable recording, and I did not have to make many allowances for this one.
On interpretation, it is, as others noted for the 1988 release, surprisingly modern. I follow Charles Rosen in considering that Bach’s keyboard works can be played on any keyboard instrument a player has to hand, and nowadays that includes the piano. Arrau’s choice of tempi is unexceptionable, and his slight tendency to slow towards the end of the slower variations is no more than expressive licence. He tends to favour a non-legato touch, which brings out the lines very clearly, and I marvelled at the way he could distinguish the separate lines, including in passages where the hands cross one another, as they frequently do. (Bach wrote with a two-manual harpsichord in mind, in which some of these passages would have been easier). He makes hardly any use of the pedal. He plays all the repeats. He provides all the ornaments, sometimes in versions slightly, though not greatly, different from those in my printed score, edited by Ralph Kirkpatrick in 1938, but Kirkpatrick’s notes, as well as more recent scholars I consulted, make it clear that there is some room both for disagreement among specialists and for interpretation by the player.
There is a great variety of moods in the work and I enjoyed the way Arrau responded to these. He can be light and bouncy, as in Variation I, sturdy and forthright, particularly in fugato passages, as in Variations IV, X and XVIII, dance-like as in Variations XIX and XXIV, and deeply expressive, as in Variations IX, XIII and XXV, the so-called ‘black pearl.’ He also takes the opportunities for virtuoso display, particularly in the sequence of fast variations following the ‘black pearl.’ I also frequently noted his use of a light and gentle touch, very different from the weighty manner sometimes associated with him.
In his note, Andrew Rose speculates how recording history might have changed if this version had come out when it was made, and whether Glenn Gould would have made the sensation he did in his first recording of 1955. I think Arrau has lasted better than Gould. Although most listeners are likely to start with a modern recording, such as Murray Perahia, one of the two versions by András Schiff, or the recent and very good Beatrice Rana, this would make an excellent historic choice. Arrau fans will not hesitate.
Stephen Barber
