What kind of piece of music is JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations? Is it even a single piece of music? Today, we’re used to the idea of the Goldbergs as a pinnacle of the piano repertoire, as a “golden mountain”, and an evening-length demonstration of virtuosity. But their origin is far from this. “I think it’s a very modern idea that one has to listen to the Goldbergs in the sequence that they’ve been published,” pianist Cristian Sandrin tells me, when we talk by video call. “They were commissioned to relieve the Count Keyserling of his insomnia, of his sleepness nights. Their first performances were intensely private and intimate – a very meditative, contemplative experience.”
Count Keyserling’s attempt to cure his insomnia found itself strangely mirrored by Sandrin’s own experience of the music. “In 2019 I had to go in for surgery, an operation which I had to be awake for. The anaesthetists asked me if I wanted to listen to something, and I said: the Goldberg Variations, played by Glenn Gould.” The last time Sandrin had listened to Gould’s famous 1955 recording was almost 20 years before. “It was only the second time that I heard them – and I don’t remember much! They gave me all kinds of sedatives, substances to drift through the experience. Shortly after that surgery, the pandemic started, and I was in lockdown in London. I started learning the Goldbergs.”
On 2nd February, Sandrin performs the Goldberg Variations at Sinfonia Smith Square, interleaved with three newly-commissioned variations from composers Farhad Poupel, Louise Drewett and Philip Dutton. Each composer responds to Bach’s original material in their own way. And while the Goldbergs can today seem like a monolith, Sandrin emphasises that the variations are more of a compendium – and a tripartite one at that.
“There are basically three types of variations: first, there are dances,” Sandrin says. The 4th variation is a Passepied, the 7th is a Gigue, the 13th is a Sarabande. To put it more precisely, all of these variations make reference to existing genres and types of music (the 16th variation is a French Overture, and the 30th and final variation is a Quodlibet, a vocal genre).
In contrast to these generic and dancelike variations are the contrapuntal variations, where Bach composes canons at every interval from unison to a ninth. “The contrapuntal variations are my favourites,” Sandrin says. “You can really play around with the tempos of these variations. Varied tempos emphasise the different structures and voicings in these canons.” While a dance like a Gigue might have an expected quick tempo, there is no expectation for the tempo of a canon at the ninth.
Finally, there is the third layer of variations interleaved within the Goldbergs: the toccatas. These virtuosic, hand-crossing variations are played with as much dexterity and facility as the performer can muster. Originally envisaged for a double-manual harpsichord, on a modern piano “they require a lot of hand crossing, and huge jumps.”
Seen in this way, it makes perfect sense to view the Goldbergs as a compendium, even something occasional, for the performer to dive into. While the variations are assembled in a certain order, they are also a family album comprising individual items, to be excerpted as needed. And though Sandrin isn’t planning on re-ordering the variations, it makes sense to explore interleaving other music into them – no doubt as Goldberg himself might have done when playing for Count Keyserling.
Farhad Poupel is a UK-based composer of Iranian origin, and Sandrin explains how “he came up with the idea of writing a dance, not a Sarabande, not an Allemande, not a Gigue but a Persian dance, based on Bach’s aria.” “When I first spoke with Cristian,” Poupel writes, “the idea of composing a stylized Reng came to mind. Reng is the most prominent Persian dance, widely recognized across Iran and the Persianate world (including Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and beyond). This dance, often in a 6/8 rhythm with a hemiola feel, seemed like a fitting choice.”
In contrast, Louise Drewett’s variation is highly contrapuntal. A frequent composer of choral music, Drewett writes that she is “exploring how I can use strict canons within my own musical language, as well as using simple melodic material derived from folk melodies,” echoing both Bach’s canonic variations and the Quodlibet, which contrapuntally overlays at least two different folk tunes, as well as many other still-unidentified fragments.
The final newly-commissioned variation is composed by Philip Dutton, and takes another tack, this time derived from visual references: “The character of my piece is itself a variation on the name Goldberg, which translates as ‘golden mountain’. This interpretation has guided me to Nicholas Roerich’s series of Himalayan paintings, where mystical, golden hues illuminate the mountain peaks.”
It might seem that variation form would be alien to current trends in composition, but in truth contemporary composers frequently rely on composing through existing material. Even JS Bach is frequently returned to. Michael Finnissy, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Philip Venables and Cassandra Miller are among many composers with recent pieces making use of material from Bach.
Sandrin relates this to a recent experience he had visiting Durham Cathedral. “Often the Goldbergs are described as a cathedral in sound. It was really amazing to see glasswork done by contemporary artists inside the cathedral. It didn’t diminish the cathedral’s historical value. Rather it made it more welcoming – more true to ourselves, kinder to our present selves. People often claim that contemporary music cannot be written as well as it was written during Bach’s time. That’s not true.”
Indeed, in its own time Bach’s music was considered highly idiosyncratic, and greatly experimental in both its dissonance and density of contrapuntal variation. “It is very intellectually demanding, because of all the complex polyphonic lines,” Sandrin says. “Memorising it, really, is the thing that makes performers scared about performing it.” In learning the Goldbergs, performers have at least one advantage: a regular harmonic structure. “I don’t think the Goldbergs are easy to memorise, but they’re certainly easier than the Art of Fugue!”
Sandrin himself comes from a musical family: his father, Sandu Sandrin, was a well-known pianist and professor of piano at Bucharest Conservatoire. “Many people assume that he had been teaching me from a young age – which was not the case. But what really influenced me was seeing his devotion to music. Seeing the steadfastness of my father in his approach to practising was an example that I strive to follow, even now. Every day, he was practising the piano until late, regardless of his other engagements. Even when he had quiet periods with no concerts, he would always go back to practising.”
This kind of continuing dedication and devotion to the private activity of practice is a challenge for many instrumentalists – young and old. “When you’re young, the problem often is you don’t know what you have to do. Your parents tell you: you must practise 2 or 3 hours a day. But you don’t always know how to fill that time – that’s a problem!” Sandrin says. “My father wasn’t teaching me himself, but sometimes he would find me when I was practising and tell me: ‘You’ve played this enough. Stop it! Go on!’”
It can be easy, too, to get swallowed up by trying to reconstruct a composer’s musical intentions, despite a distance of centuries. Working with living composers is a welcome contrast. “Working with a live composer, the person is right there!” Sandrin says. “It’s much easier to access the character, and the intellects behind the music.” Indeed, composers and performers sometimes disagree about interpretations of their own music – and it’s ultimately performers who have the final word. “It can be intimidating to work with a composer who’s very particular… But it depends on your frame of mind. Once you’re on stage, you can liberate yourself, and try to be true both to yourself and the composer at the same time. One has to strike a very fine a balance between these two entities!”
“There are more composers per capita than ever in history,” Sandrin concludes. “We just have to go and listen to them. To meet them, encourage them to compose more, explore more, commission works from them. Give them work! This is what my project aims to become. A little bit of activism in support of living composers and contemporary music.”
Cristian Sandrin performs the New Goldberg Variations on 2nd February 2025 at Sinfonia Smith Square, London.
Cristian Sandrin’s recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Op.109–11 is released 7th March 2025 on Evil Penguin Records.
This article was sponsored by The Kettner Society.