Rating: 3/5
Review:
Not for me
I'm not all that keen on Pietro de Maria's Goldberg
Variations. There are a lot of truly
great recordings of these pieces, but I don't really think that this stands
among them.
De Maria is plainly a very good pianist. He is technically up to the challenge and his
tone and touch are very lovely in places.
However, I don't think he does Bach all that well. In the opening Aria, for example, there is a
halting, almost stumbling feel to the rhythm at times which loses the pulse and
flow which so vital to Bach. He also
manages something similar to what I hear in Ashkenazy's recent French Suites:
somehow the lines of counterpoint don't gel into a whole at all in places so
even more of the coherence is lost. Then
Variation 1 comes crashing in; I understand the need for contrast of mood, but
the opening bars just seems like unsympathetic thumping. I'm afraid I found both the thumpiness and
disconnectedness in Variation 4, the staccato left hand seems almost
elephantine in parts of Variation 14…and so on.
This doesn't happen everywhere. I like the lightness and flow of Variation 5,
the rhythmic flexibility works very well in a lovely Variation 13, and there
are other good moments. Overall, though,
I think Bach himself gets rather lost in de Maria's interpretation and I'll be
sticking to my treasured recordings by the likes of Angela Hewitt, Richard
Egarr and others. I can only give this a very qualified recommendation.
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