Posts Tagged ‘johan sebastian bach goldberg variations’

Simone Dinnerstein Brings Bachs Music Back to Life

Simone Dinnerstein’s performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” was simply incredible. The first thing I want to address is the actual performance. Simone’s skill is at a virtuosic level that I can’t even comprehend. How can one’s fingers move that quickly? The amount of emotion she put into the piece was astonishing. I really felt like she took the piece to heart, and that she made it a part of her own being. Just an interesting thought; while she was playing all I could think about was the fact that over two hundred and fifty years ago this piece was being performed by Bach.

The piece itself was also incredible, although hard to follow at times. The main theme, the “Aria”, was easy to remember and when it came back at the end of the piece it was very refreshing. Although each variation is not a variation on the original theme you can hear the basic harmonic structure of the theme, and at some points you can hear allusions to the theme. It’s also amazing how Bach structured every third variation to be a canon at the ascending intervals, i.e. variation 3 is at the unison, 6 is at the second, etc. The piece stays in one key, although sometimes going into the minor mode, which makes it easy to follow and it makes the variations seem coherent and tied together.

The piece was written during the Baroque era and this fact is very obvious in the music. Chords resolve where they should, for the most part, and there is little dissonance. Since this piece was so long I had a lot of time to think about it in comparison to the 20th century music we are currently studying. It was during this time that I finally realized the difference in tonal resolution between music of the Baroque and Classical era, and music of the 20th century. There are dissonances in the Goldberg Variations, but they resolve to pitches that are more “pleasant” or “desirable” even. In 20th century music we also see dissonances, but they resolve to “wrong” or “unpleasant” pitches. I just thought it would be nice to tie this piece into what we’re studying now, and how to contrast the 20th century with other musical periods.

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