Open Garden

Jardim Aberto

Live music

Tuesday 12 January · 18:30

In this Open Garden concert, Alexis Hatch, Isabel Pereira and Alexandre Alvarez perform Bach's Goldberg Variations in Dmitry Sitkovetsky's string trio transcription, revealing the contrapuntal clarity and eloquence of Bach's music.

Few works of the early repertoire have crossed time and instrumental boundaries as durably as the Goldberg Variations. Published in 1741, in Volume IV of the Clavier-Übung, they constitute the most extensive set of keyboard music printed in the eighteenth century and one of the rare cases in which Bach's work achieved fame during the composer's lifetime. The legend associating their origin with the insomnia of Count Keyserlingk and the young harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg has been increasingly contradicted by musicological research; more consensual is that Bach had in mind, as a probable performer, his son Wilhelm Friedemann. Regardless of the story attached to them, what remains is an architecture of thirty variations, a true encyclopedia of the keyboard and a supreme exercise in contrapuntal invention. The passage of this work to other instrumental formations is part of a practice that is neither modern nor foreign to Bach. In the Baroque period, transcribing, adapting and reusing material from others was a common procedure among composers, and Bach himself practised it, both with his own music and with works by other composers. Transcription does not betray the work: it prolongs its life and broadens its reach. It is in this context that Dmitry Sitkovetsky's version for string trio fits, begun in 1984 under the impact of Glenn Gould's recording of the Variations, completed in 1985, the tercentenary of Bach's birth, and dedicated to the pianist's memory. With the three instruments, the counterpoint gains clarity and Bach's art reveals itself in its sharpness and eloquence. Alexis Hatch, Isabel Pereira and Alexandre Alvarez give voice to this reading, showing that Bach's music continues to speak to musicians and audiences alike, a sign that it remains alive, not as a monument, but as an active presence.