Bach: Goldberg Variations 1955

Begin with the ornamented upper line, then move your attention downwards. Another route through the music opens beneath it. Gould’s 1955 Goldberg Variations makes that pleasure unusually immediate: a single piano seems to contain several speakers whose sentences remain distinct.

Recorded in New York in June 1955 and released in January 1956, this was Gould’s debut album. The year commonly attached to it identifies the recording. An aria frames thirty variations and returns at the end, all within roughly thirty-eight minutes. The sequence does not simply become faster or louder. Contrasts of density and movement provide useful landmarks before any detailed knowledge of the score.

When accompaniment becomes the subject

Counterpoint can sound forbidding as a term. Here, try thinking of several voices speaking together while retaining their own paths. Gould’s sharply outlined playing makes it possible to follow a lower part instead of automatically attending to the highest notes. There is no obligation to hear everything simultaneously. Choosing a different register on the next visit can change the experience without changing the recording.

An individual reading, not the discovery of Bach

Landowska and Tureck had recorded the work before Gould. His importance should not erase those predecessors. In his later National Recording Registry essay, Tim Page describes the debut album’s substantial popular and critical impact. That account supplies context, rather than an instruction to admire it. Listen for the particular personality that appears through the old score: the directness of the attacks, the clarity of overlapping lines and the sense of forward movement.

Coming back to the beginning

The returning aria arrives with the memory of everything between. You can compare the two appearances after exploring a few favourite variations, or hear the entire sequence. Later, Gould’s 1981 recording offers another comparison: how differently can the same pianist place time between notes? Neither a historical reputation nor a preference for the faster performance settles that question. The record remains rewarding because attention can keep moving within it.