Klara Wurtz, piano. Piano Classics PCL10230.
By Bill Heck
The Goldberg Variations? For those who don’t know, it’s an oft-told story but I’ll summarize it quickly: supposedly one Count Keyserling, Russian ambassador to the court of Saxony, was troubled by serious insomnia. The Count employed a musician by the name of Goldberg, who accompanied him on a trip to Leipzig where they met Bach. Somehow Bach ended up writing a set of variations to help the Count sleep, or at least to make his sleeplessness more bearable, and the Count would frequently ask Goldberg to play a few variations at such times, thus the reference to “Goldberg Variations.” There are multiple reasons to doubt this legend, but in any case, the name has stuck, and I suppose it’s as good a name as any: would the “Keyserling Variations” be any better?
Regardless of the pedigree, it’s difficult to know how the Variations could be soporific. Granted, they are not rousing marches or stirring calls to arms, but their inventiveness, constantly changing moods, and sheer depth are hardly calculated to induce snoring, at least for anyone listening with more than half an ear.
So, who is Klara Wurtz? Although not a household name, she is hardly unknown: she has recorded extensively, mostly on Brilliant Classics, and has an active touring career. Her past recorded repertoire has included a complete Mozart sonata cycle, a Schumann cycle, and other works by Schubert and even Bartok; she has garnered positive reviews along the way. So far as I can tell, this album is her first recorded foray into the Baroque.
Now to the recording at hand: this is the point where I admit to feeling somewhat inadequate to my reviewing task. The set of Goldberg Variations is one of the most famous and most often recorded works in the keyboard (piano and harpsichord) literature. Scholarly articles discussing the composition abound; entire books have been written on the topic. Isaac Newton’s remark about feeling like a child on the seashore diverted by a shinier pebble while surrounded by a vast ocean of undiscovered truth seems all too apropos. So rather than trying to dissect details and refer to specific passages, I’ll concentrate on the characteristics of this recording that I find so appealing: moderation, clarity, and sound.
First, Wurtz steers what I hear as a steady but well-chosen course between extremes of performance: tempi are generally moderate but never dragging; there is no exaggerating for atmospheric effects, she doesn’t hot rod to show off; and there are no sudden, puzzling shifts in dynamics. I certainly don’t mean to say that the playing is mechanical; Wurtz is fully capable of flying when that fits the music, as in Variation 9 or the finger-twisting madness of 15. Instead, I mean that she stays focused on presenting the music in an appealing way, yet one that does not call attention to the playing for its own sake. There are some other performances during which you might suddenly think “What was that?” after some surprising sound: in this recording, the surprises are the ones delivered by the genius of Bach himself.
Secondly, Wurtz’s playing has remarkable clarity, by which I mean that every note seems to be delivered audibly while still being placed in the correct context. I heard few, if any, passages in which the moving voices of Bach’s writing were lost, obscured, or otherwise difficult to follow. Again, this does not mean that each note is sounded in the same way at the same volume; that would be unmitigated disaster. What I do mean is that I could hear the notes clearly but each in a place that seems appropriate for its role in the sonic landscape, as part of a unified whole. To use a visual analogy, even the tiny details or a fine painting are visible if you look closely, even though some are larger or more colorful than others.
Finally, the performance is presented in superbly recorded sound: the Piano Classics team has outdone themselves. The piano is of believable size (no eight-foot-wide keyboards here), with a nicely centered sonic image, all in a naturally reverberant field-- but not so reverberant as to subtract from the clarity of the playing. (The liner notes tell us that the recording venue was the Westvest Church, Schiedam, The Netherlands and, for those keeping score, the instrument was a Steinway D.) The sound is coherent through the entire range. I did think that the lowest registers of the piano could have used a bit more weight, but that’s a minor quibble – and besides, we’re listening to Bach here, not Liszt. One other point: the between-variation (between track) gaps are quite short. For this music, that seems a wise choice that keeps the variations flowing, the better to compare and contrast them one to another.
Drawing all this together, perhaps the word I want here is “lively” (“delightful” comes to mind as well) in the sense that Wurtz makes Bach’s music come alive. No, this performance will not make you forget Gould or Perahia or any other personal favorite, but then everyone needs multiple versions of the Goldbergs, right? In any case, to my ears, this one stands on its own as a fine achievement.
BH
By Bill Heck
Regardless of the pedigree, it’s difficult to know how the Variations could be soporific. Granted, they are not rousing marches or stirring calls to arms, but their inventiveness, constantly changing moods, and sheer depth are hardly calculated to induce snoring, at least for anyone listening with more than half an ear.
So, who is Klara Wurtz? Although not a household name, she is hardly unknown: she has recorded extensively, mostly on Brilliant Classics, and has an active touring career. Her past recorded repertoire has included a complete Mozart sonata cycle, a Schumann cycle, and other works by Schubert and even Bartok; she has garnered positive reviews along the way. So far as I can tell, this album is her first recorded foray into the Baroque.
First, Wurtz steers what I hear as a steady but well-chosen course between extremes of performance: tempi are generally moderate but never dragging; there is no exaggerating for atmospheric effects, she doesn’t hot rod to show off; and there are no sudden, puzzling shifts in dynamics. I certainly don’t mean to say that the playing is mechanical; Wurtz is fully capable of flying when that fits the music, as in Variation 9 or the finger-twisting madness of 15. Instead, I mean that she stays focused on presenting the music in an appealing way, yet one that does not call attention to the playing for its own sake. There are some other performances during which you might suddenly think “What was that?” after some surprising sound: in this recording, the surprises are the ones delivered by the genius of Bach himself.
Secondly, Wurtz’s playing has remarkable clarity, by which I mean that every note seems to be delivered audibly while still being placed in the correct context. I heard few, if any, passages in which the moving voices of Bach’s writing were lost, obscured, or otherwise difficult to follow. Again, this does not mean that each note is sounded in the same way at the same volume; that would be unmitigated disaster. What I do mean is that I could hear the notes clearly but each in a place that seems appropriate for its role in the sonic landscape, as part of a unified whole. To use a visual analogy, even the tiny details or a fine painting are visible if you look closely, even though some are larger or more colorful than others.
Finally, the performance is presented in superbly recorded sound: the Piano Classics team has outdone themselves. The piano is of believable size (no eight-foot-wide keyboards here), with a nicely centered sonic image, all in a naturally reverberant field-- but not so reverberant as to subtract from the clarity of the playing. (The liner notes tell us that the recording venue was the Westvest Church, Schiedam, The Netherlands and, for those keeping score, the instrument was a Steinway D.) The sound is coherent through the entire range. I did think that the lowest registers of the piano could have used a bit more weight, but that’s a minor quibble – and besides, we’re listening to Bach here, not Liszt. One other point: the between-variation (between track) gaps are quite short. For this music, that seems a wise choice that keeps the variations flowing, the better to compare and contrast them one to another.
Drawing all this together, perhaps the word I want here is “lively” (“delightful” comes to mind as well) in the sense that Wurtz makes Bach’s music come alive. No, this performance will not make you forget Gould or Perahia or any other personal favorite, but then everyone needs multiple versions of the Goldbergs, right? In any case, to my ears, this one stands on its own as a fine achievement.
BH
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