Goldberg Variations BWV 988 - Du Tianqi

Du Tianqi must have the patience of Job, recording this debut album in late 2018—with the heavyweight Goldberg Variations—having to wait until 2022 until the album was released. The Steinway piano he uses sounds delicious; our closeness to the instrument permits us to hear the nuances of performance in a very good way, showcasing the pianist’s gifts with articulation. I applaud the engineers of this album for getting us that close without turning the album dry.

Du seems somewhat influenced by historical performance practice, providing us variations in repeats. Some are standard fair, while others tickle me, at least, in their novelty.

It’s clear that Du is positioning himself as a Bach specialist on piano. The most famous might be the late Glenn Gould, but there are others, even if they don’t exclusively perform Bach: Angela Hewitt, Jeremy Denk, Vladimir Feltsman, David Frey, and Zhu Xiao-mei. Full time musicians become known for their interpretive signature, which we might call their style. Recordings are dangerous because they become a testament to one’s style. They restrict us to but one way to think about a work, or least, a particular variation.

I kept thinking that this won’t be the last time we see Du record this work. I almost felt like with the gift of time he might have more to say.

Often the Goldberg Variations are offered on one disc. For this album, Du observes repeats and Naïve required the use of two discs. 88 minutes total, about eight over the capacity of a redbook CD.

I quickly thought about Korean pianist Ji. The guy can really play and I felt he treated the Goldberg Variations as a virtuosic powerhouse. And what a shame that his recording (Warner Classics) hasn’t catapulted his career further.

There is some overlap in Du’s touch on the piano, at least in some of their playing, however overall I felt like Du wasn’t trying to perhaps show-off as much, exploiting the music quite as much. His approach instead of more relaxed, but his personality and technical ability is sometimes restrained but always admirable. Ji sometimes stress-tested Bach in ways that Du did not.

Take Du’ rendering of variation 3 (track 4). Both hands are rendered clearly. The phrases of each half are offered up innocently enough, but he allows the repeats to be the environment to vary things, to play with rubato, ornaments, and to provide more definitive glimpses variations of phrasing. In much the same way, only more so, he goes to town in the repeats of the fourth variation.

In variation 6 I like how he treats the phrases dynamically. We can kind of hear that on a harpsichord, but he pushes that forward in this performance on piano. There is a lot of clarity to his playing without ever turning to extremes in dynamics.

Interestingly, Du does sometimes vocalize, but not to the degree of Gould. He takes all the repeats in which he often, but doesn’t always introduce variation with ornamentation. It’s executed well, beautifully, even, in some unexpected ways. The way he varies the voices within the music with dynamics and articulation is consistently well done.

Variation 16 is presented in the form of a french overture (a big opening with dotted rhythms, followed by a faster contrapuntal section). The style is there, but the tempo perhaps is too slow; the repeat takes the texture in a different direction. While this may not be one of my favorite tracks from this recording, it showcases Du’s talent with articulation which seems perfectly matched on the Steinway-D he used. The 20th variation sees this talent in full force. His playing is amazingly clean and the dynamics he employs we can feel in Bach’s writing even if he wasn’t using any indication for them. I’d therefore say Du does well to bring out the inherent dynamic quality of Bach’s writing, making a strong case for using the modern piano.

Many love the so-called black pearl in the set, variation 25. Du nearly takes eleven minutes to render it; it certainly is an interesting piece given Bach’s style and how contemporary it can sound. I am in wonder how Du manages not to turn it romantic-sounding, given his chosen tempo. (He again goes to the same place, emotionally, in the playing of the B section of the final Aria.) He even manages to make portions of the Quodlibet sound stately. The hold at the end is different. What a reminder that he’s come to the end, the last variation. The emotion carries into the Aria da capo.

I came across Du’s live concert of the Goldberg Variations on YouTube. The desire of every CD I listen to, I want to see the performers too. In this case, I got to see how Du moves his body and his face reveals a lot about how he’s hearing the music. He vocalizes a bit in the recording, but not to the level of Gould or Keith Jarrett. His whole body is focused on the material.

Du reveals to me he’s no doubt technically talented, but he’s also got a sharp interpretive lens. His clean playing style has produced what I might consider a reference recording for the Goldberg’s on piano. What impressed me about this album the most was the aim for complete transparency and control. It is no doubt a virtuosic work but he didn’t need to exploit the music for it. I felt some restraint was applied. It demonstrated both his good taste and maybe too his reverence for the music.

There is a lot to admire from this recording and I am so excited to hear more from Du.