The large number of experiments inspired by Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, perhaps reaches its apogee in this Austrian recording (although no doubt someone will find a way to outdo it). It is the stable bass line of the variations that stimulates this kind of thinking: no matter how far the musicians get from the original, they can remain linked to it by that bass line. This Gold.Berg.Werk is packed with ideas that may at times interfere with one another, but you never lose track of what's going on. The chief problem is that programmer
Karlheinz Essl does not perform his "electronic interventions" on Bach's music itself, but on another intervening layer: the arrangement of the work for string trio by Russian composer/performer
Dmitry Sitkovetsky, which has been recorded by several other ensembles. Then
Essl rearranges the variations. He groups them into canons, character variations, and harpsichordistic variations (corresponding to
Ralph Kirkpatrick's traditional classification consisting of canons, genre pieces, and arabesques). Instead of performing the variations in sequence, he offers two sets of character variations and two sets of canons, in alternation. The harpsichordistic variations are simply eliminated. After the initial Aria, before its final reprise, and in between each group of variations comes an electronic intervention, variously designated as an "aria electronica," "sarabanda electronica," or "fantasia chromatica electronica." Each of these matches Bach's harmonic structure, but is in more or less free rhythm, and each seems to take off, in some cases without a pause, from the variation leading into it. If this was all not enough, the booklet instructs you in such concepts as the dialectic between nearness and distance, and on top of all this there is a video segment depicting the recording of the work. It's hard to pin down a principle that ties it all together beyond sheer speculation, which is here in abundance for those who like it.