Ben Laude: "I got obsessed with how he was playing it"
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
Release Date: 03/12/2021
The Complete 30 Bach Goldbergs
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
We've heard different performers play different parts of the Goldbergs. Now, we're putting them together. This is the complete 30 Bach version of the Goldberg, through 15 separate performances. It's Bach's Goldberg Variations, with some twists and turns.
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Aria: "He was superman"
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
At last, we bring it all together with the return of the aria. It's the same place we began, and yet it feels different, colored by the journey. A journey through many different worlds, different places, different people's lives. Lowry Yankwich plays the final aria.
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Lennart Felix: "When I come back here, I always feel at home"
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
In the last variation of the Goldbergs, Bach returns home, to a tradition of his family: creating mashups.
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Hie-Yon Choi: "So much fun"
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
Variations 26, 27, 28, and 29. These variations vibrate with joy, energy, excitement. We explore the times when Bach could let loose and lose himself in play within his music.
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Jeremy Denk: "The farthest possible place"
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
If the Goldbergs are a celebration of life, variation 25 is a reckoning with mortality, revealing pain but also providing comfort. In this episode, we hear from many different people, including pianist Jeremy Denk, Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott, scholar Eric Motley, pianist William Heiles, and dancer Melissa Toogood.
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Kevin Sun: "We need joy"
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
Variations 22, 23, 24. Interview with Kevin Sun, medical student and concert pianist. We discuss sources of joy in Bach’s life, and his ability to conjure joy, warmth, and humor in his music as an antidote to the tragedy that follows.
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Rachel Breen: "My musical education was painful"
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
Variations 19, 20, and 21. Pianist Rachel Breen didn't have an ordinary classical music education; guided by her father, not himself a musician, Breen began with a diet exclusively of Bach. This episode delves into what it's like to learn music as a student -- the practice, the errors, the experimentation -- and what Bach was like as a teacher himself.
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"Bach would have been a good programmer, a good engineer"
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
Variations 16, 17, 18. Bach knew not just how to write music, but how to build it. In this interview, we speak with pianist Jeffrey LaDeur and his student, Ken Kocienda. Kocienda was lead software engineer behind the Apple iPhone. Kocienda and Ladeur discuss parallels between music and design, and how constraints can actually enhance creativity.
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Jeff Scott: "This is just an absolute party"
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
Who said Bach's music was the last word? This episode features an interview with Jeff Scott, hornist and composer, about his work “Passion for Bach and Coltrane,” which combines poetry with reimagined music from two of the greats: J.S. Bach and John Coltrane. Get ready for an Afro-Cuban version of Variation 13.
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Angela Hewitt: "Lifted up into a different world"
30 Bach: The Goldberg Variations Podcast
Variations 13, 14, and 15. Bach's faith was central to his music-making. This episode explores the spirituality of Bach's music with Angela Hewitt, internationally-renowned interpreter of Bach, who has performed all of Bach’s keyboard works across the world.
info_outlineVariations 10, 11, 12. It's impossible to tell the story of the Goldberg Variations without mentioning Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. Gould's two recordings of the variations, one in 1955, the other in 1981, forever changed the place of the Goldbergs in our culture. In this episode, we explore Gould's legacy -- and the idea of musical idols -- through the eyes of Ben Laude, a concert pianist and pedagogue who relied on Gould in a period of musical crisis.
Photo credit: Rebecca Blair.