Middelschulte: Organ Works, Vol. 4 - Goldberg Variations Arranged for Organ

Album review

Talk about gilding the lily -- in 1914 Ferruccio Busoni made a transcription of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations as adapted for performance on the "modern piano" versus the harpsichord original. It wasn't played much then, and it has gained even less traction in future days, as since 1955 Glenn Gould has established for all time the reality that Bach's original sounds fine on the modern piano with only slight, or no, modifications. However, a decade after Busoni's effort, his Chicago-based friend Wilhelm Middelschulte made a version for organ that he premiered in Evanston, IL, in 1924, a mere week before Busoni expired in Berlin. Middelschulte certainly had Busoni in mind when undertaking this work, and organist Jurgen Sonnentheil presents it for the first time on disc in CPO's Wilhelm Middelschulte: Organ Works Vol. 4: Goldberg Variations. The first page and a half of the liner notes attempt to justify Middelschulte's highly interventionist arrangement by citing a laundry list of instances where Johann Sebastian Bach reinvented his own music for various purposes. That is not in dispute; what will concern devotees of historic Bach is the extent to which Middelschulte injects himself into the "transcription" over and above what Bach requires. Bach's purist adherents can relax in that, unlike Busoni, Middelschulte does not feel the need to change the formal structure of the Goldbergs, and the only newly composed material is in the form of short transitional tags between variations, rather than the "discard and replace some of the variations toward the end" approach of Busoni. Moreover, in some ways Middelschulte serves Bach in elucidating some of his canonic business that sinks into the general texture of the familiar keyboard version through his creative and colorful use of registration. That both musicians concerned themselves at all with the Goldberg Variations in their time is noteworthy, as the conventional wisdom about the work echt 1920 was that it was dispensable, overlong, and didactic. Nevertheless, in terms of "authenticity," that's about as far as it goes. Middelschulte's romantically derived manner of interpreting ornamentation and elastic approach to tempo makes these Goldbergs one slippery and nearly surrealistic ride. This effect is heightened, to some extent, by Sonnentheil's decision to utilize both of the radically different versions that Middelschulte left of this transcription, employing alternate readings in the manner of elaborated repeats; it also results in a Goldberg Variations that runs nearly two hours in length. For that, it's certainly never boring -- heady and weird-sounding, though, it is. One aspect that renders CPO's Wilhelm Middelschulte: Organ Works Vol. 4: Goldberg Variations disappointing is the sound -- it's faint, distant, and rather hissy. If you are a freak for period authenticity in Bach, you'll hate this. However, as an experience taken on its own terms, Middelschulte's oddball transcription of the Goldbergs is like a roller coaster ride taken on a Baroque-era track, and as such, can be quite thrilling.
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