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The fourth volume of Bach’s monumental Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice, begun with the Partitas that Schiff plays four days earlier), the “Goldberg” Variations were “composed for connoisseurs, for the refreshment of their spirits,” according to the title page of the work, published in 1741. The story that Bach wrote this aria and its 30 variations for his sometime pupil Johann Gottlieb Goldberg to play for an insomniac patron is apocryphal, but the piece is a typically Bachian wonder of the sort that inspires mythologizing. Rigorously organized and defined, it reveals Bach’s great gift for transfiguring and transcending strict self-imposed limitations with prodigious creative imagination.

Come for:

The final chapter in Schiff’s heralded exploration of Bach’s keyboard works.