The performer is then a bridge between the audience and the music. You can sense more breathing and more soul around you you feel that you’re not alone. Personally I prefer to have an audience when I’m playing, because then the mood is different. For you as a performer, how much difference does the presence of listeners make to the way you approach a piece? There are two recordings of the Goldbergs on this album – one with an audience and one without. It’s a side to me that’s always been there. It’s certainly not the case that I don’t like them, and now I’d like to do more, so this is a new beginning for something different. It’s the highest level of what I might call 'dark' music.īut I’ve never felt that I only like fast and exciting music it’s just that in concerts, I’ve tended not to play the more introverted pieces to the same extent. For instance Variation 25 of the Goldberg Variations – you cannot get more intimate than that. The music is what matters the most, whether it’s passionate, tragic, intimate or something else. I’m definitely not just a virtuoso pianist: that’s only a part of me. Do you think there’s something inherently introverted about these pieces that sets them apart from other works? The accompanying notes mention Harnoncourt’s comments that, as a pianist in your mid-20s, you needed 'more solitude and stillness' in your performance of the Goldbergs. But in addition, I thought this would be a great way to improve myself to learn more things that I didn’t know, for instance in the area of ornamentation, and generally to make myself a better musician. I also just love Baroque music personally it’s very different from Romantic repertoire but it’s very emotional – I have a great emotional attachment to Bach. So there’s a lot of room for me to play, in a sense. They form a very long piece too but are also very dynamic, almost like a symphony. They have many, many very virtuosic passages, yet at the same time many elements that resemble a big organ work. What is it that’s now drawn you to record the Goldberg Variations?įor me, it matters because the Goldberg Variations are a different type of Bach work. There’s one big question that many people will surely be asking – as an artist who tends to record Romantic and Classical repertoire, this is a change of repertoire for you. 30, recorded by Tafelmusik musicians in their homes in April 2020. Want a teaser of what to expect? Enjoy this video of Elisa Citterio's arrangements of Variations no. Johann Sebastian Bach Goldberg Variations (world premiere of a new transcription for orchestra by Elisa Citterio) Grégoire Jeay The Phantom of Goldberg (harpsichord solo) Single ticket access for this concert will be made available on May 12, 2022. Sure to be a highlight of the 2021/22 season, this extraordinary program opens with a solo work for harpsichord by Canadian composer Grégoire Jeay, performed by Tafelmusik’s Charlotte Nediger.ĭigital Season Passes are available now! Don’t wait for tickets to go on sale, buy a pass today and gain access to all current releases and more. Elisa first envisioned the new arrangement in 2017, when Tafelmusik performed orchestral transcriptions of two excerpts of The Goldberg Variations during a tour of its multimedia program J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations was written as an exercise in keyboard virtuosity and remains among the most technically demanding works ever written for harpsichord. Inspired by Bach’s practice of reworking his music, Elisa Citterio offers her own musical translation of the composer’s timeless keyboard masterpiece in this new arrangement for strings, winds, and continuo. Join us for the world premiere of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in a new orchestral arrangement by Music Director Elisa Citterio Elisa Citterio director and orchestral arrangement