Search - Bach, Steuerman :: Goldberg Variations

A Mixed Bag

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 11/04/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I have an illness: I collect recordings of the Goldberg Variations. I blame it all on Glenn Gould, whose mid-1950s LP got me started. I fell in love with the variations, hacked my way through them at the keyboard, and kept acquiring recordings. I now have about thirty (I'm afraid to check the total--it might be more than that) and I keep telling myself I won't buy any more. I mean, who could add anything to the wonderful recordings I already have? My last major purchase was the CD by Murray Perahia, which I felt had something new to say, and I reviewed it here.But I kept hearing good things about Jean Louis Steuerman's recording, so I bit the bullet and bought it. I'm not sorry, but it's not an unmixed joy. Steuerman, a Brazilian who looks to be in his early forties, is a marvelous technician. There is not a note out of place. He clearly has thought long and hard about how he wants to play these pieces. And, I might add, the recorded sound of his piano is among the best I've ever heard, although the bass notes sometimes sound a bit nasal. But, there is a kind of uninflected stolidity to his playing which intrudes, for instance, into the poetry of the great 25th variation or the joie de vivre of the canonic 18th and the triple-meter 19th that follows it. His touch is somewhere between the legato of Schiff and Perahia, and the détaché playing of Gould. But that makes it somewhat faceless. He does manage a nice leggiero in the 23rd variation which, I can tell you from experience, is hard to accomplish.I was surprised to read in the most recent Fanfare that came a few days after I'd been playing this CD that Laura Ronai, a critic I often agree with, named it one of the top five CDs she'd heard this year. I guess I can see where she is coming from, but can't agree. His playing is very solid, and very musical, and his repeats are often inventive (although nowhere nearly as much as Perahia's). But it doesn't sparkle, it doesn't soar. One further quibble. The CD comes as a so-called 'CD livre' ('CD book') from Naïve, the record label. And indeed it is bound as a little hard-bound book about the same size as a jewel box; the CD fits into an envelope that is bound as one of the book's pages. The book itself, however, is a 32-section (one for each variations, get it?) essay by one Hubert Nyssen that is in the doggedly pompous (and consequently silly) style so often found in French booklet notes. Should you buy this CD? Well, it certainly wouldn't be my first choice. But it's a heckuva lot better than some I've owned. Since the Gould twofer just came out recently that might be a better way to go. Or of you don't like his mannerisms, you might go for Perahia or Schiff. Scott Morrison"