In 1996, the young violinist Jorge Jiménez heard Bach's Goldberg Variations for the first time – in Glenn Gould's famous version on a simple cassette recorder. Since then, this wonderful composition has not let him go. At first he resigned himself to the fact that as a violinist he would never be able to play this work. But over time he realized that several voices can sound at the same time on the violin, as Johann Sebastian Bach exemplifies in his six famous partitas and sonatas for solo violin.
Finally, he set to work and began to transcribe one of the most complicated piano pieces of the Baroque into a piece for solo violin. This is, says Jiménez, like trying to "fit all the furniture of the Palace of Versailles into a tiny garret: You have to choose the best pieces and try to keep the feeling of the big room in the small". Jiménez, with great knowledge of the piece and exhausting all the technical possibilities of his instrument, has managed to fulfil his great dream: with his arrangement, the Goldberg Variations can now be heard for solo violin, and Bach's six great "solos" have been joined: just as exciting and certainly just as technically demanding. © Pan Classics