Bach: Goldberg Variations Reimagined

The chameleon-like qualities of Bach’s music are legendary, and were first exploited by the great man himself who regularly rearranged his own works. Just as the art of writing is said to be all about the rewriting, for Bach, too, the process of recomposing was often where the magic happened. Transformations of Bach’s music have continued ever since because its layers of richness call out to musicians, tempting them with exciting possibilities, not least the practical value of making his music for solo instruments available to larger ensembles. “One of my aims in life is to play as much Bach as possible,” Rachel Podger tells Apple Music Classical. “I’ve dabbled with playing the Goldberg Variations on the violin, and when we all had the headspace during the pandemic to have new inspirations, I thought, wouldn’t it be great to play it in an arrangement with other instruments? Chad Kelly, the composer, came to mind as the ideal person to reimagine Bach’s harpsichord masterpiece for a Baroque ensemble.” “As a keyboard player myself,” says Kelly, “I have great affinity with the Goldbergs, and I’ve played the variations many times. But even the keyboard leaves something wanting—the music still has more to say.” Rescoring it for strings, flute, oboes, bassoon and harpsichord offered lots of new colours to play with. “The most important thing was to tell a story, and the only way to do that is to invite the instrumentalists in to help tell it—by bringing out the details.” Podger loves this new expressive dimension: “The joy of having nine different instruments is you have so many possibilities for different combinations, and for creating effects on a much greater scale,” she says. “Variation 16 is this grand French overture, and in Chad’s reimagining of the music you just feel like you’re in some opera and someone’s just about to come on stage and dance. And then the change to something very, very intimate, like a two-voice canon, is so much more effective.” It’s the same with the emotional content of the music, where the contrasts seem even more powerful when opened up by these new instruments. “There’s this tragic quality in Variation 25, and every time you play it something slightly different reveals itself to you,” adds Podger. “Then afterwards, Variation 26 is very soothing, like a big hug.” Kelly’s reimagining of the music may be more colourful and emotionally powerful than the original, but does it still sound like Bach? As he admits, “there are a few movements which you might not recognise as being from the Goldbergs, like Variation 20, which now sounds like a concerto for violin and cello.” But Kelly has reworked Bach’s keyboard style for the violin so well that Podger claims the rapid violin figuration feels instinctively like Bach under the hand. There are a few liberties appearing here and there, but they’re all in the right spirit, including the final variation, where Bach wittily combines snatches of folksong. “We do a bit of improvising on the repeat,” she reveals. “We recorded it quite a few times, just for the fun of it!”