Since Virgin Classics didn’t have a piano version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in its catalog, it apparently fell to Nicholas Angelich to put things right. His immaculate technique, impressive evenness of touch, and clear projection ensures smooth sailing throughout the difficult score. The cross-handed variations boast suave textural control (Variation 14’s leaping trills and stingingly accurate ornaments, for example) even if they don’t consistently match the harpsichord-like two-manual differentiation that Murray Perahia and András Schiff achieve. Tempos are not too fast nor too slow, and for the most part are well integrated. The three minor-key variations are more animated and flexible than usual, certainly in comparison with the measured austerity of Glenn Gould’s 1981 remake.
My main criticism concerns Angelich’s tendency to round off phrases with frequent diminuendos that sound increasingly mannered and predictable over the course of the work. More often than not they pull focus from Bach’s linear trajectory: why the sudden dip in Variation 4’s third bar, or Variation 3’s phrases that alternate between loud and soft (not extremely so, to be sure, but the effect is, as my British critics might say, “a mite twee!”)? One might also wish for greater left-hand presence to support Variation 13’s long-lined right-hand melodies, greater lilt in Variation 24 (the canon at the octave), and more incisive rhythmic delineation in the otherwise bland and uneventful first section of the French Overture (Variation 16).
On the other hand, Angelich’s stately power and force imparts welcome cumulative fulfillment to the final Quodlibet (Variation 30), in contrast to Simone Dinnerstein’s somberly sagging rendition. For the record, Angelich observes all of the repeats, save for those in the Aria da capo. You wonder if a less billowy and resonant recording might reveal an edgier, more individual pianistic personality at work. As it stands, Steven Vladar’s similar yet more direct and better recorded interpretation may have more staying power, not to mention our essentially unchallenged reference versions listed above.
