A Pair of Recordings - Bach's Goldberg Variations played by Ho and Schnyder
From time to time, “record companies” release competing issues of the same work. A week apart, I auditioned a new recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations BWV 988 on harpsichord and then a second recording on piano. It’s a very well-known piece, requiring expertise in both technique and interpretation to do well in a crowded marketplace. I always think about why performers approach this work, which I wager can come down to trying to answer one of two questions:
- What do I have to say that’s profoundly different from other interpreters?
- How can I be noticed as an world-class artist, using this work as my springboard?
I think, and I hope you do too, that the first question is more interesting. For this review I wanted to look at two new recordings, one by an HIP harpsichordist and one by a pianist (who, by the way, is not a specialist with Bach’s music).
I’m familiar with the French harpsichordist Jean-Luc Ho’s work in the past; he’s recorded the six partitas by Bach and it’s understandable that he may want to record more of Bach’s major works. As far as contemporary French harpsichordists go, we have Jean Rondeau’s recording and his current contemporaneous tour alongside Ho. I think Rondeau is perhaps better known, at least he’s represented with a larger label.
Ho was born in 1984, Rondeau in 1991. I reviewed Rondeau’s recording, alongside another by Esfahani. Both Rondeau and Ho studied with Blandine Verlet.
Oliver Schnyder is pianist I’ve never heard of, but it won’t take you long to discover he’s made a number of recordings. Maybe it’s not a surprise I don’t know his name, he performs “classical” repertoire usually not covered on this website. This is his first album, I can find, of music by Bach. Both recordings, to cut to the chase, are well done and will certainly delight many admirers of this work.
Ho records the variations on an instrument that once belonged to his teacher, the late Blandine Verlet, to whom the album is dedicated. The instrument’s sound is strong in the upper portion of frequency bands, giving the sound a very bright quality. At first I liked the sound but after some time the brightness started to annoy me. I took a break from headphones and found the effect less annoying on loudspeakers. Unlike the recording by Andreas Staier, Ho does not attempt to continually vary the sound signature of his instrument, instead leaving what options this instrument may provide alone, if it has these bells and whistles.
I do suspect the instrument has two keyboards, as in some variations, the voicing in the right hand is distinct from that in the left, which helps us hear the two voices more clearly. In fact, I’ve read before that some say that the piece can’t be fully realized on the piano, as Bach was capitalizing upon the requirement for two keyboards (to facilitate hand crossing).
In researching for this review, I came to read that Verlet’s late recording of the same work received good press. I believe her recording was not made on the same instrument; at least it does not have the same sound signature when I’ve sampled from it. With so many harpsichordists today able to trace their professional lineage to Gustav Leonhardt, I found it interesting in this Verlet-Ho lineage that Verlet’s background was not with Leonhardt but with Huguette Dreyfus. Her lineage goes back to Wanda Landowska), credited with the revival of the harpsichord.
There might be an interesting study to see just how the Ho and Dreyfus recordings align but that might be for another day. We might do the same with her two students. (While I can almost picture the tables and graphs comparing each variation among multiple performers, the differences splayed out, it won’t really matter until we get to the heart of the why about their interpretive choices, which one cannot reasonably do without talking to the musicians. And I think while this might make for an interesting book for connoisseurs of this music, we also have to be prepared for both the pragmatic and shrug-of-shoulder answers that might come forth: I played that one fast because we needed to fit everything onto one CD, or I am not sure why I played it that way, I was tired of playing it another way when we set down to record.)
The one thing I will say is that Dreyfus would ornament a little bit more in repeats, saving the repeat, if you will, to throw in an extra ornament or two. I have noticed Ho doing the same thing, although there are instances where his additions are more elaborate than a simple mordent or turn.
There were a few times I found Ho’s tempos in want of more push. The opening tempo, say, of the fourth variation is in need of some speed. On repeat, he’s adding more to the texture, which in turn justifies the initial tempo a bit more, but I was still in want of some speed. The next variation might have been that opportunity, but Ho’s interpretive lens is to hold back from treating this piece as a virtuosic display piece for the performer’s technical chops. The same goes for variation 9, which on first performance is almost too slow; on the repeat there’s more baroque filigree added which helps justify the initial tempo. But maybe not enough?
Ho is very consistent in his playing. There are times I do hear these pieces differently under his command; in those instances where I wanted more speed, his more measured approach helped me hear Bach’s texture better. A good example is the 14th variation, which is presented at a decent pace, but the knurly bits where the two hands have to fit together after the opening licks fit together well as interlocking puzzle pieces. This variation also shows off well the range of timbre the instrument possesses across its entire range.
The approach by Schnyder first has me thinking his heart just beats a little faster than Ho’s. In general, he plays most of the variations faster. There’s much attention paid to his articulation and matching that articulation on repetitions in the music’s phrases. The first variation from both albums is worth a comparison to hear the difference.
Schnyder also goes much further than Ho when adding a number of fanciful touches on the repeats. It’s been awhile since I anticipated the repeats this much, just to see what the artist might do each time. I will say that I do believe that is a pointed reason for having repeats in music like these. No, Bach does not write in the introduction “please, whatever you do, please add extra ornaments, new melodic runs, and all sorts of fancy figurations to my music in the repeats!” But such a delight can be had when artists tickle our memories—and we’re jaded here with having pieces like this one that are deeply embedded in our memories as masterworks in the canon of classical music—so that when they add things that we don’t recognize, extra pleasure becomes our benefit.
It’s also something we can’t escape: These recordings all come after Glenn Gould. Schnyder’s fifth variation has that speed that I was craving. Which is not to say we should abandon the harpsichord or that every artist has to play at least as fast as Gould. But as time moves forward for musicians in the age of recordings, you have that many more performances before you that have been put out into the world for consideration. Recordings don’t have to a be a competition, but given the finite span of attention we have, what you want to say better be different, to the degree we can at least tell.
I don’t have booklet notes with this piano release, but I’m guessing Schnyder is not trying to emulate the harpsichord on the piano. Instead he’s using the piano to its advantages when it comes to volume, articulation, and other dynamic variables. It has me wondering if some these could be wrought on the harpsichord as well? While I think the piano in Schnyder’s case does inspire some of the options he gives us, I also think he is more inventive with presenting each variation in its own unique space.
With Ho, I felt he was trying to present every variation within the same space, if that makes any sense? I did mention his consistency.
Both recordings probably don’t have what I might call five-star recording quality, as far as my preferences go; both, I felt, might be dialed in just a tad to be more dry in presentation. For Schynder’s in particular, it would allow us to hear some of his dynamic shading even a little easier.
If there’s one curiosity in the Schnyder recording it would be his handling of the twenty-ninth variation. At first I disliked it quite a bit, it sounded messy and disheveled. “My god, we’re almost done!” he must be thinking. But that right hand figure does kind of lend itself as a “shaking” type of figure and his realization lets us hear that more vividly than most have given us in the past. I will say it’s interesting, and the more I’ve lived with it, the less offended I become. It’s one of those moments where I think some humor pokes through to remind us the person making this music is a real human and not a box sitting atop our furniture.
While I am not here to declare which instrument is most appropriate for Bach or Bach’s Goldberg Variations, these two new recordings do sit on very opposite sides of my shelf. Both artists rise to adding variation within the binary structure of the pieces’ repeats. But otherwise they are very different. Yet both commendable.
I am going to wager that Schnyder’s reason for making his recording was to forge something new. Of any of the piano renditions I’ve listened to as of late, this one for me was chock full of unexpected delights. As someone who has played the piano, I can appreciate his deft control of dynamics and articulation and how he intelligently maps these within the microcosm of each variation to bring real variety to phrasing.
I am also going to wager that Ho’s reason for making his recording was to make his mark as a world-class interpreter of Bach. While not getting into the weeds with it, I don’t think he made a carbon copy of the recording by his former teacher and mentor. However, I do hear her influence on his performance. This comes through with some articulation in playing, tempo, and ornaments.
Ho’s interpretive style is more conservative and careful than Schnyder’s; at least given the taste of what we got with Schnyder’s 29th variation. This care at times came at the cost of tempi that on first listen might disappoint; but I will confess that I never heard the canon between voices as clearly as in Ho’s interpretation of Variation 27; in some ways this was an almost new piece to me. The voicing on the left vs right hand also helped in this respect. I thought the seven minute duration of the 25th variation might be excruciating; but in that example I came to like Ho’s interpretation better despite Schnyder’s ultimately three-minute quicker duration (spoiler: he doesn’t repeat this one).
Playing the game of choosing one track on one recording versus the other is a losing prospect. Overall, I think Schnyder’s recording will appeal to a larger segment of the population with its variation in the way he plays each variation and the phrases within each. Pianists, I think, should marvel over his control and inventiveness.
The overall feeling I gained from listening to Ho’s recording was that he was there to present the music with august respect and admiration, without being showy or severe in approach. To me hearing some of his variations executed at slower tempos, and especially when peppered with some ornaments, was refreshing in a world post-Gould.
For what it’s worth, I still have my favorite recordings: Ji on piano and Blandine Rannou’s and Wolfgang Glüxam’s on harpsichord. Yet I think there should always be space on our shelves to include other interpretations, especially of the world’s most celebrated works. These two new recordings, while different, both offer us some differences from the way we typically hear these works and are worth your time.
