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LSC-2851 STEREO 2

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Photos: Jerry Dantzic

Mono LM-2851 Stereo LSC-2851

J. S. Bach—GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

PETER SERKIN, Pianist

Produced by Max Wilcox * Recording Engineer: Richard Gardner

Program Notes Enclosed

IMPRESSIONS OF A YOUNG MUSICIAN

© 1965, Radio Corporation of America @ Printed in U.S.A.

by EUGENE ORMANDY

One of the deepest gratifications which I have

experienced over along and joyous musical life has been

that of watching the ripening of Peter Serkin.

It seems as if it were but yesterday that he was

coming to my dressing room in the Academy of Music

prior toa concert (he attended them all from the age of

three), shyly requesting the scores of the works to be

performed andasking (he couldn't have been more

than nine or ten at the time) remarkably pertinent

questions about the music, the instrumentation, and

- occasionally embarrassing questions about the way in

which I would conduct certain passages.

I have seen many young musicians grow and

develop, sometimes into gifted performers sharing a

real musical experience, sometimes into but shadows of

their youthful promise. But I have never seenan

all-embracing musical curiosity to match Peter's.

Evenas alittle boy he was not only studying the

piano, but also absorbing the rare musical atmosphere

of the Serkin household, presided over by one of the

greatest pianists and musicians of our time: Rudolf :

Serkin. To say that Peter shares his father’s philosophy,

music first and piano second, will be evident to all who

listen to this recording in which pianistic values are

always high, but always subservient to the music itself.

It is, I think, characteristic that on each occasion

Peter has appeared with The Philadelphia Orchestra,

he has played Mozart: the E-Flat Major Concerto for

Two Pianos (with his father) and the F Major

Concerto. Any sensational debut would have been

utterly alien to his person and temperament. And how

pleased I was at the reception accorded him by the

members of the Orchestra, the public and the

critics. All recognized the intrinsic musical

values which he both pursued and realized.

On this occasion of Peter’s debut as a solo recording

artist, I warmly greet a dear friend on the threshold

of adistinguished career in the service of MUSIC.

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J. S. Bach/ Goldberg Variations

Peter Serkin, Pianist

“dn epitome of Bach’s art.”

© 1965, Radio Corporation of America

In the panorama of music history can be witnessed

the gradual development of many musical forms,

often spanning centuries, such as the growth of the

symphony from the naive beginnings in Johann

Christian Bach to the all-embracing structure re-

quired by Gustav Mahler. However, certain forms,

in the hands of consummate genius, have found their

most extended expression in the times of their in-

ception. Perhaps the greatest example of this is the

work to which this recording is devoted: Johann

Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

In his day, Bach was one of the finest of keyboard

artists, renowned throughout the German-speaking

world not only as an organist but also as a player of

Clavier, a generic term which embraced all keyboard

instruments, particularly the harpsichord and the

clavichord. During his lifetime he published four

volumes comprising the Clavieriibung (Keyboard

Practices) which demonstrated his skill in compos-

ing in all of the forms available to a keyboard artist

of his time: fugue, canon and chorale-embellishment,

as well as the many dance forms. In 1731 appeared

the Six Partitas; in 1735, the Italian Concerto and

the B Minor Partita; in 1739, a collection of chorale

arrangements, and, finally, in 1742, one of his crown-

ing achievements: the “Aria with Thirty Variations,

prepared for the Enjoyment of Music Lovers, by

Johann Sebastian Bach,” as this fourth volume of

the Claviertibung was originally entitled.

In 1736 Bach had been appointed “Composer to

the Royal Court of Poland and Saxony,” thanks to

the active intervention of Count Hermann Carl von

Kaiserling, the Russian Ambassador to the Saxon

Court. This exemplary nobleman loved music and

had taken under his patronage several fine young

musicians, including Johann Gottlieb (Theophilus)

Goldberg.

Goldberg was born in 1727 and became a well-

known organist and composer, active in court circles

in Saxony until his untimely death in 1756. He first ~

studied with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Johann

Sebastian’s most talented and favored son, and even-

tually, during the years 1742-48, with the great

father himself.

An early Bach biographer, Johann Forkel, has left

us the suspect but accepted story of the origin of the

Goldberg Variations. Count Kaiserling, wearied in

mind and body by the many commissions and respon-

sibilities of his post as Ambassador for the energetic

Catherine the Great, had constant difficulty in falling

asleep each night. He found that upon occasion music

could open the arms of Morpheus. Accordingly, his

protégé, Goldberg, spent the nights playing for the

sleepless Count from an adjoining room. Kaiserling

requested of Bach a series of pieces, “smooth but

lively,’ which would either induce sleep or enable

him to pass more pleasantly his wakeful hours. That

Bach took no offense at the nature of this unusual

commission is evidenced in the magnitude of the

variations which he composed for his pupil’s noble

patron. So pleased was Kaiserling with these vari-

ations that he always referred to them as “his”

variations, and rewarded the composer in a truly

princely fashion: one hundred lowis d’or presented in

a golden goblet. However, as Forkel comments of

these variations, “had the gift been a thousand times

larger, their artistic value would not yet have been

paid for.”

The origin of the theme upon which Bach built

this amazing edifice is unknown, although it appears

in the 1725 Clavierbuch of his wife, Anna Mag-

dalena. It is a sarabande in G. Bach, however, does

not resort to the melody for the source of his inspira-

tion (as is more generally true in the composition of

variations) ; rather he chooses the bass line for the

foundation blocks.

The entire work can be likened to an immense pas-

sacaglia (variations upon a ground bass, similar to

the chaconne) in which the harmonic implications

of the bass line flower thirty times in differing and

wondrous guises. Bach’s genius rarely met so great

a challenge so tellingly. Each variation stands upon

its own intrinsic melodic merit, although the vari-

ation of the fundamental bass line is kept to a

minimum. Ralph Kirkpatrick gives the “harmonic

skeleton,” as he calls it, as follows:

Various harmonic changes are rung upon this line,

which never appears in exactly this form anywhere

in the entire course of the variations; however, as

Kirkpatrick writes, “a detailed study of these vari-

ations .. . reveals more fully the intellectual span,

the imagination, and the genius which permitted so

much daring freedom.”

The series of variations resembles a symmetrical

garland: each third variation is a canon, progres-

sively from the unison to the ninth. The two central

canons (the fourth and the fifth, Variations XII and

XV) are in contrary motion. The work begins and

ends with the Aria, and interspersed are those vari-

ations which so beautifully demonstrate Bach’s as-

tonishing versatility in the handling of the varied

forms of his day. For example, Variation III is a

pastorale, Variation VII is a saltarello, Variation X

a fughetta, Variation XVI an ouverture a la fran-

caise, Variation XVIII an alla marcia, Variation

XIX a quasi-barcarolle, and Variation XXIV a gigue.

It is perhaps in the last Variation (XXX) that

Bach permits himself the most daring exercise of

wit. It is called a quodlibet (“do what you will’) in

which he mingles two folk songs, at once “base, com-

mon, and popular’—Kraut und Riiben haben mich

vertrieben, which can be roughly translated ‘Beets

and cabbage give me indigestion,” and Ich bin so

lang nicht bei dir g’west (again, translated roughly),

“we’ve been apart so very long.”

Here we have a charming picture of Bach en

famille, unbuttoned after a good meal, busy with

Hausmusik with his so very musical children. The

jolly scene of homey musical intimacy aroused by

this variation parallels in our own time the very real

joke that it must have represented in its day. That

its intent is humorous is undeniable, regardless of

its dramatic terminal position in so “artistic” a set

of variations.

Perhaps the most marvelous attribute of this music

is the total sense of unity which Bach achieves, de-

spite the infinite variety of the variations. This is

surely due to the employment of the same ground

plan for each; a musical factor perhaps elusive to the

casual ear, but a factor which, nonetheless, results in

harmonic coherence and, by virtue of its recurrence,

establishes an ever-growing sense of familiarity as

the variations progress.

The Goldberg Variations are an epitome of Bach’s

art. His feet are planted firmly in the forms and pat-

terns of his day, but his imaginative genius o’erleaps

what would be deterrents to lesser men, transform-

ing the leaden commonplace into pure gold by the

alchemy of his unique genius.

Notes by WILLIAM SMITH

Assistant Conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra

Peter Serkin was born in New York

City, July 24, 1947. He entered Curtis Institute of

Music in Philadelphia in 1958 and studied there for

six years with Lee Luvisi, Mieczyslaw Horszowski,

and his father. In the summer of 1959 he made his

first public appearance in a performance of a Haydn

concerto conducted by Alexander Schneider at the

Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, and in 1961

made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut.

The 1964-65 season was the young pianist’s first

full year of concertizing. He made his New York and

London recital debuts and gave a number of recitals

in Switzerland, Germany and Iceland. He also made

his Boston debut in two concerts with the Budapest

String Quartet, played in both Philadelphia and

New York with Eugene Ormandy and The Philadel-

phia Orchestra, appeared as soloist with the London

Symphony Orchestra and with the English Chamber

Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival, and toured

Germany with the Budapest Radio Symphony Or-

chestra.

Mr. Serkin has appeared on several occasions at the

Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, and in the summer of

1965 he participated in the noted Prades Festival in

France, of which Casals is musical director.

LM/LSC-2851 Printed in U.S.A.