The Buck Stops Here

Again, the achievement is hard to grasp for non-musicians. Imagine, as a rough analogy, that a poet wrote a poem in which every successive stanza took the same words that were used in the previous stanza, and then displaced all the letters, substituting B for A, C for B, and so on. And not only did each stanza still make sense, it was a work of beauty. That would be only slightly more difficult than what Bach did with the Goldberg variations. It's just incredible. [read more]

thanks to Cooped Up

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There and Bach Again
The revealing new release that pairs Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations.

The one significant exception to this rule is Bach's Goldberg Variations, which he recorded twice. The first recording, from 1955, was his major-label debut and instantly made him an international star. The second, from 1981, was, eerily enough, his swan song, the last recording he ever made. Critical opinion of the first release is close to unanimous: It's considered a milestone in Bach performance and one of the greatest keyboard recordings ever made. The second enjoys a somewhat rockier reputation, although it has its passionate champions. [read more]