Minsoo Sohn
Honens Laureate Series: Goldberg Variations
“...an artist, a man who will create a life in music, find listeners, and reward them.” – The Boston Globe
Minsoo Sohn in conversation with Eric Friesen
There is an astonishing, mysterious power in Bach’s Goldberg Variations to attract the young pianist. The most famous instance is Glenn Gould’s first commercial recording in 1955, with which the 23-year old Canadian announced himself to the world. Before Gould, there was Rosalyn Tureck, who at age 19, was already playing the Goldbergs in public on the piano, this in the 1930s. Minsoo Sohn was also in his teens when he began with naive ambition to tackle one of the monumental works in piano literature. “It was like a climber’s dream for Mount Everest.” Now, 15 years later, “through many years and many cycles of studying and re-studying,” Minsoo has finally come to record it for the first time.
Bach never gave it the name Goldberg Variations. The name stuck after Forkel, Bach’s first biographer, passed along the legend that the composer wrote this mighty work as a commission from a Count Keyserlingk, the Russian Ambassador to the Dresden Court. Keyserlingk (this part is true) employed a brilliant young harpsichordist named Johann Goldberg and (legend again) wanted some music to cheer up the insomniac Count during his sleepless nights. Bach, so the story goes, was paid handsomely, a golden goblet filled with a hundred Louis d’ors. But, fiction or not, the name Goldberg has and will forever be associated with this work, and is in fact much more romantic and poetically succinct than Bach’s own, more workmanlike title: Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with Diverse Variations for the Harpsichord with Two Manuals. Composed for Music Lovers to Refresh Their Spirits.
The Goldbergs opens and closes with a short aria, on which Bach constructs a dazzling array of 30 variations. The aria is a graceful, dignified yet intimate sarabande, whose left hand bass line is heard in some form in each of the variations that follow. The architecture is important: the 30 variations are divided into groups of threes, with every third variation being a canon. Each group begins with a free variation, often a dance, and the second of the set is a toccata, the most brilliant of the variations. Each variation is 32 measures long, matching the 32 movements of the whole. A numerologist’s paradise.
Bach wrote this work in the last decade of his life, bringing the whole of his genius and experience to bear on its construction. It was as if he were designing a cathedral, from the smallest gargoyle to the whole edifice. For the player there are three challenges. The first is to paint the whole picture of the piece, that is to understand and present it as a whole even as he focuses on the demands of each variation. The second is to master its technical challenges: Bach wrote the piece for the two manual harpsichord, but today’s pianist plays it on a single keyboard, requiring the most balletic crossing of leaping hands and arms imaginable, especially in the toccatas. Angela Hewitt, a veteran of playing the Goldbergs, shudders and uses the word “treacherous” when describing
these variations. The third challenge, the greatest of all according to Minsoo, is for the pianist to “find his own voice through this music.” Bach leaves so much to the player’s imagination, the possibilities of interpretation are almost infinite.
What an overwhelming variety of riches in this work. There are many outbursts of almost giddy joy (Variations 1, 5, 14, 23, 28), moments of sublime tenderness (Variations 9, 13), regal fanfares (Variations 10, 16, 29) and the three dark, desolate G-minor variations (15, 21, 25) that in Glenn Gould’s memorable phrase, “cast a Good Friday spell”. And the bookends: the aria that so simply, almost tentatively opens the work; and then returns, 30 variations later, the same but transformed as if we are coming home again after a life-changing pilgrimage. There is a lifetime of emotional experience in this work, or as Minsoo says: “this music is reflective of my life, through ups and downs it has endured, restoring the spirit of music within me.”
And this brings us to the heart of the Goldberg’s power. For Ressler, a character in Richard Power’s novel The Gold Bug Variations, his first hearing of the work “initiates a process that will mutate his insides for life. The transparent tones... suggest a concealed message of immense importance.” I suspect that for most of us who love the Goldbergs there is a concealed message, individual and mysterious as it is. For the player as well as the listener, the Goldbergs admit us to a lifetime of hard-earned pleasure unravelling the mystery. As for Minsoo Sohn? “I know I am still in the process of discovering the universe, perhaps a life-long task for me.” Welcome to the journey.
© 2011 Eric Friesen
Eric Friesen is a veteran broadcaster, writer and speaker on music and culture. He spent much of his life as a network classical music host and producer
for CBC Radio and Minnesota Public Radio (MPR). He serves and has served on a number boards and advisory groups in the arts, including the Board of
the Honens International Piano Competition.
Classical: Piano solo