Aria
Variatio 1
Variatio 2
Variatio 3
Variatio 4
Variatio 5
Variatio 6
Variatio 7
Variatio 8
Variatio 9
Variatio 10
Variatio 11
Variatio 12
Variatio 13
Variatio 14
Variatio 15
Variatio 16
Variatio 17
Variatio 18
Variatio 19
Variatio 20
Variatio 21
Variatio 22
Variatio 23
Variatio 24
Variatio 25
Variatio 26
Variatio 27
Variatio 28
Variatio 29
Variatio 30 - Quodlibet
Aria

The music of Johann Sebastian Bach has always fascinated the Swiss pianist Oliver Schnyder. Since early childhood, he has been preoccupied with the musical universe of this composer. Bach appeared again and again on his concert programmes, and the famous arrangements such as "Schafe können sicher weiden" or the Myra Hess version of "Jesu bleibet meine Freude" were always popular encore pieces. Now Oliver Schnyder has tackled Bach's giant work of the "Goldberg Variations" twice. A first recording made during the lockdown did not convince the artist, who always prepares meticulously for his recording projects, one hundred percent. After the recording, he could not get this work out of his head and his interpretation, articulation and the special execution of the ornaments continued to develop. That is why Oliver Schnyder went back into the studio in 2022 and recorded the "Goldberg Variations" a second time on a Bösendorfer grand piano. This time he is satisfied. Although it cannot be ruled out that there will be another version of BWV 988 in a few years, for the moment this recording is Oliver Schnyder.

"definitive" version and a convincing calling card in all respects for original, thoughtful and highly emotional Bach playing. Here is a short text written by Oliver Schnyder on the "Goldberg Variations": "Bach's largest cyclical piano work, the Aria with 30 changes from the Clavierübung Part IV, has been called simply "Goldberg Variations" since it was mentioned in Johann Nikolaus Forkel's first biography of Bach (1802). There we also find the anecdote that the Russian envoy to the Dresden court, Count Keyserlingk, who was a friend of the Bach family, commissioned the composer Johann Sebastian Bach to write "some piano pieces" with which the court harpsichordist Johann Theophilus Goldberg was to entertain him during sleepless nights. The anecdote is famous, especially because of the amusing contradiction that the variations, in their complexity and expressive eloquence, are completely unsuitable as hypnotics; of course, one could also understand Forkel as saying that the stimulating effect was intended to make an already sleepless night more diverting. Another argument against the veracity of Forkel's tradition is that is also contradicted by the absence of a dedication to the count in the first print of 1741. Moreover, it is hardly conceivable that Goldberg, who was twelve years old at the time, would have been able to cope with the gigantic work. Whether true or well invented: The Goldberg Variations represent an exceptional work."

Oliver Schnyder