Beatrice Rana – Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (2017) [FLAC 24bit/192kHz]

For her second Warner Classics release, young Italian pianist Beatrice Rana turns to a pinnacle of the solo keyboard repertoire and a composer she has described as “my first love”: Johann Sebastian Bach. Her interpretation of his epic Goldberg Variations bears out Le Monde’s judgement that “Beatrice Rana certainly has nothing left to prove when it comes to technique, but what makes an impression are her calm maturity and her sense of architecture,” and Gramophone’s that she is “a fully developed artist of a stature that belies her tender years.”

Bach was the composer who most obsessed Beatrice Rana as a child, and in a recent interview with Pianist magazine, she confessed that it would be his music, and above all the Goldberg Variations, that she would choose if she had to devote her life to a single composer. As she said: “I’m very happy to be going back to Bach … It’s best to avoid Bach in competitions … you can’t expose yourself to be totally killed by the jury! But Bach is my first love; now I am allowed to play it in public and I’m really looking forward to that.”

“Beware! I put on this disc and found myself barely able to move for the 78 minutes of Bach’s masterpiece, so familiar yet suddenly so new. Rana’s playing has a kind of Orphic seductiveness, a transcendent lightness of touch. She yields little to Glenn Gould in mercuriality and fleetness (her toccatas are “brio” at its most devastating), and lacks his tendentiousness. How beautifully she draws the bemused interior phrasing of variation XIII, or the plangent dissonance of the extended “Black Pearl” variation XXV. A supremely intelligent reading”. – The Times

“This recording of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations is Italian pianist Beatrice Rana’s second album for Warner Classics. In 2016 I reviewed her splendid first Warner release of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 which made quite an impression. Beatrice Rana is a pianist who makes you sit up and take notice. Her striking recording will sit agreeably alongside my favourite Goldberg recordings: Rosalyn Tureck’s aristocratic 1998 Hamburg account, so full of perception, is on Deutsche Grammophon. Glenn Gould’s1981 New York City recording on Sony is very enjoyable too, albeit rather headstrong for some. For those preferring a harpsichord, the 1965 recording on Teldec by early music specialist Gustav Leonhardt is admirable for its directness of approach”. -Michael Cookson

“She’s absolutely extraordinary, she’s totally thought through the music. She has her own take on it without being idiosyncratic, she writes an extraordinary interesting, intellectually probing but very humble note in the booklet. If you think back to when Glenn Gould recorded the 1955, the early fast and joyous, Goldbergs he was a year younger than rana, and I also think of Julia Fischer doing the Sonatas and partitas for Violin at the age of 21. It might be a bit silly to talk about people like Gould and Fischer, but I think Rana is up there, she’s got something really interesting and very personal to say.”- BBC Radio 3 Record Review

Tracklist:

01. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Aria
02. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 1 à 1 clav
03. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 2 à 1 clav
04. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 3 Canone all Unisuono à 1 clav.
05. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 4 à 1 clav.
06. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 5 à 1 o vero 2 clav
07. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 6 Canone alla seconda à 1 clav.
08. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 7 à 1 o vero 2 clav.
09. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 8 à 2 clav.
10. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 9 Canone alla terza à 2 clav.
11. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 10 Fughetta à 1 clav.
12. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 11 à 2 clav.
13. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 12 Canone alla quarta
14. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 13 à 2 clav.
15. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 14 à 2 clav.
16. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 15 Canone alla Quinta à 1 clav.
17. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 16 à 1 clav. Ouvertura
18. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 17 à 2 clav.
19. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 18 Canone alla sexta à 1 clav.
20. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 19 à 1 clav.
21. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 20 à 2 clav.
22. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 21 canone alla settima à 1 clav.
23. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 22 à 1 clav. alla breve
24. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 23 à 2 clav.
25. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 24 Canone alla Ottava à 1 clav.
26. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 25 à 2 clav.
27. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 26 à 2 clav.
28. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 27 Canone alla Nona à 2 clav.
29. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 28 à 1 clav.
30. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 29 à 1 o vero 2 clav.
31. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 30 à 1 clav. Quodlibet
32. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Aria da capo e fine