Artist handles difficult piece with style, grace

By Richard Storm for The Register-Guard.

Bach's "Goldberg Variations" constitute one of the defining achievements of our civilization.

They offer proof positive that the human intellect and the human creative spirit can produce art that not only transcends the everyday but also lifts the audience to the limitless possibilities of art. As Robert Levin pointed out in his Thursday lecture, we are given the opportunity to live for a time in the realm of genius when we submerge ourselves in the world of a great artist. We are, in effect, equals with the creator of the work during the time it resonates in our souls.

Does this strike you as pretentious, "artsy" rhetoric? Perhaps, but you should try to live with it anyway, for it may be a step toward our mutual realization that the great art we must appreciate and share is the key to our survival now, more than ever.

Pianist/conductor Jeffrey Kahane, in his Thursday performance of this fiendishly difficult set of variations based on a graceful, modest aria, succeeded in conveying both the monumental character of these examples of sophisticated craft and their reflective and introspective moments. If his performance was not note-perfect, and it wasn't, that is of minor importance given the overall triumph he found in realization of this music.

Written late in Bach's amazing life, the Goldberg Variations take the basic harmonic structure of the lovely song that opens and closes the collection and builds a musical edifice of heroic dimensions. The variations, in groups of three (a number of great mythical and religious significance for Bach), are typically symmetrical, typically ingenious.

Each group begins with a canon (similar to a round ... think "Row, row, row your boat" in the hands of a genius), followed by an independent "character study" on the harmonic structure, i.e. a fugue, an Italian dance, a French overture, etc., and concludes with a dazzling virtuoso display, often emphasizing rapid scales and complex crossing of the keyboard voices.

The fact that these pieces were written with a two-keyboard harpsichord in mind means that the pianist has his work cut out for him when playing these crossed parts. A contortionist piano virtuoso is probably required for complete success.

In addition to the stern technical demands of the display sections, a melting lyricism is needed for the more introspective moments, with total command of the resources of the instrument. The aria itself and several of the variations (No. 25 comes to mind) are wistful in their songful, arching melodic structure. When they are performed on the modern piano, they test the player to risk everything in his search for a suitable tonal palette to express the delicacy of the melodic line, its decorations and the harmonic underpinning.

Kahane's performance met and surpassed most of the technical tests inherent in the score, but there were more missed notes than expected, some of them evidently due to brief memory lapses. He was playing the score from memory, for the most part, and the occasional reference to the printed page may have disrupted some of the memory flow, even if it was intended only to confirm the progression of the sections, some of which are very similar in style and notation.

The problem seemed to center on absent, rather than inaccurate, notes - possibly indicating some discomfort with the action of the piano in Beall Hall.

From the audience perspective, it seemed Kahane was striking the notes correctly, but that they didn't sound properly. This impression is given more weight when a peculiar out-of-tune hangover attached itself to some final cadences, as if the hammers were not disengaging from the strings correctly. The result was a peculiar and unwelcome twang.

While one could argue with certain stylistic choices, particularly in the choice of some rather facile ornamentation that was so rapid and indistinct as to resemble a glissando, it was clear that Kahane is deeply attuned to the stylistic devices that animate these pieces, and which are often left to the performer to choose. A certain improvisatory element is essential to the lively execution of Baroque music, even if the details have been worked out and practiced in advance, rather like fine jazz performance. Kahane provided that improvised kind of excitement in ample quantity.

In any performance of this complexity, there are bound to be disagreements about technical details, inevitable reference to other benchmark performances. The Goldberg Variations will always be identified with the two recorded versions by Glenn Gould, although many other pianists have performed them in recent years. Kahane's rendition, while not yet rising to the level of legendary, was of very high quality indeed. It should be considered a work in progress.

The audience was spellbound and impressively silent throughout. They were rewarded with an intensely lyrical, deeply felt performance of the slow movement from a Chopin sonata in which the contrapuntal invention and lyric gifts of the Polish genius measured up well to his German predecessor.

Richard Storm reviews classical music for the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune.