Wilhelm Kempff JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Goldberg Variations

Say what you will about the 75-year-old Wilhelm Kempff's "old school" Goldberg Variations, with its unembellished Aria, seeming surface plainness, and avoidance of virtuosic sheen. However, I say that this 1970 recording remains among the most beautiful and heartfelt piano versions of Bach's keyboard tour-de-force. Within Kempff's straight-laced, intimate parameters you encounter the most subtle nuances, changes of color, dynamic gradations, and accents. I've rarely heard Variation 9's lines (the canon at the fourth) sing out so calmly and naturally, or the three minor-key variations emerge with comparable ease, fluidity, and melodic cogency. Yet in Variation 27 (the canon at the ninth) Kempff also reveals how well he can deliver rapid, detaché playing when so inclined. Observing the A-section repeats, Kempff doesn't embellish them so much as he refocuses voicings and balances between hands, to convincing effect. (Jed Distler)