The Goldberg Variations for Guitar.


A mammoth task…

Last year I found myself taking on the rather foolish task of arranging Bach’s Goldberg Variations for multiple guitars.

Originally, I arranged and recorded the 1st Variation just to take my mind off what at the time, was the 2nd year of the inability to perform music due to Covid.

Why the ‘Goldberg Variations’ at all? Well, although it has been a work of supreme importance to me for 20 years, the reason the 1st Variation happened involves a chance find in the attic…

More on that another time. In any event, I was encouraged to record a couple more and before too long it had got to the point where I figured I might as well go all the way!

The title of the work in Bach’s hand is “Keyboard exercise, consisting of an ARIA with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals. Composed for connoisseurs, for the refreshment of their spirits”.

For now, all I can say is that the project has certainly ‘refreshed my spirits’ and has been a source of great inspiration for many months.

Of course it was a project undertaken for my own amusement and satisfaction, but the recordings have been picked up by the good folk at Lyric FM who have been playing them with some regularity on the station. I would like to thank in particular Bernard Clarke & Evelyn Grant in this regard.

Thanks as well to everyone on the various social media platforms who have been following the course of the project, particularly those who have been there since the outset. We have reached the finish line!

I will be soon writing a long post about my reasons for the project, my experience with it and everything else.

In the meantime, you can listen to all the variations below!

The playlist will play each one back to back and individual videos are beneath..

Enjoy!


Goldberg Variations for Guitar Playlist

 


Variation No.1

Variation No.2

Variation No.3

Variation No.4

Variation No.5

Variation No.6

Variation No.7

Variation No.8

Variation No.9

Variation No.10

Variation No.11

Variation No.12

Variation No.13

Variation No.14

Variation No.15

Variation No.16

Variation No.17

Variation No.18

Variation No.19

Variation No.20

Variation No.21

Variation No.22

Variation No.23

Variation No.24

Variation No.25

Variation No.26

Variation No.27

Variation No.28

Variation No.29

Variation No.30(Quodlibet)