"Keyboard exercises, consisting of an ARIA with diverse variations, for two-manual harpsichord. Prepared for the enjoyment of music lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach, composer for...

"Keyboard exercises, consisting of an ARIA with diverse variations, for two-manual harpsichord. Prepared for the enjoyment of music lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach, composer for the Royal court of Poland and the Electoral court of Saxony, Kapellmeister and Director of Choral Music in Leipzig." These are the words which can be read on the title page of Bach’s one and only large variation work which was published in Nuremberg in 1741.

In Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s Bach biography, published in 1802, we find the anecdote which led to the name “Goldberg Variations” under which this work is still known today: “Once, the Count [Hermann Carl von Keyserlingk] expressed to Bach that he would like to have some keyboard pieces for his [private musician Johann Gottlieb] Goldberg, which would be of such a gentle and lively character that he would be cheered up a little in his sleepless nights. Bach believed that he could best fulfill this wish by writing variations, which he had hitherto considered a thankless task because the basic harmony was always the same. But, in the same way all of his works were already artistic models at this time, these variations also turned into such under his hand. Yet, he only produced one single model of this kind. The Count subsequently called them his variations. He never tired of them, and for a long time, whenever he had sleepless nights, he would say: Dear Goldberg, play me one of my variations.”

Mechthild Winter, specialist for Early Music and living in “Bach City” Leipzig, has chosen this large variation work for her second solo CD and plays with her usual mastery. She uses a copy of a Ruckers harpsichord built in 1624 and enlarged in 1720.