Johann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
Gustav Leonhardt, harpsichord
Recorded June 1953, Konzerthaus, Vienna
Vanguard OVC 2004 [54:19]
Here’s a document of considerable historical importance—and considerable frustration. Leonhardt made this recording when he was twenty-five years old, newly appointed to the Viennese Hochschule, brimming with conviction about how Bach — ought to sound but not yet in full possession of the technical means or, more crucially, the stylistic confidence to realize that vision. The year 1953 places this squarely in the pioneer days of the harpsichord revival — when Wanda Landowska’s monumental Pleyel — still cast its long shadow and the very notion of “authentic” performance practice remained contentious, even suspect in many quarters.
The director’s presence feels palpable even in this studio setting.
That Leonhardt chose to record the Goldbergs at all—on harpsichord, no less—represented an act of considerable audacity. The opening Aria immediately signals the interpretive challenges ahead. Leonhardt adopts a tempo so deliberate, so weighted with rhetorical intent, that the music’s natural dance character nearly evaporates.
There’s an almost portentous quality to the phrasing, as if the young harpsichordist were determined — to prove this wasn’t drawing-room entertainment but High Art deserving of our most solemn attention. One sympathizes with the impulse while regretting its musical consequences. The first variation continues this pattern—stately where it might sparkle, considered where spontaneity would serve better.
Yet the picture isn’t uniformly grim. Variation 5 does indeed bubble along with genuine vivacity, the two-part writing cleanly articulated, and Variation 8 displays the kind of rhythmic snap that would become a Leonhardt trademark in later years. The canons receive thoughtful if somewhat literal treatment; one misses the subtle wit,; the conversational give-and-take that his mature recordings would bring to these contrapuntal dialogues.
The famous twenty-fifth variation—that extraordinary sarabande in G minor that Glenn Gould called “the black pearl”—emerges with genuine pathos. Here Leonhardt’s deliberate pacing serves the music’s expressive aims, the dissonances allowed to resonate, the chromatic voice-leading traced with care. For these few minutes, one hears the artist he would become.
But then we confront the elephant in the room: the instrument itself. Whatever harpsichord Leonhardt played in the Konzerthaus that June day possessed a tone of such pinched, metallic astringency that sustained listening becomes genuinely taxing. The upper register clatters unpleasantly; the bass lacks foundation and warmth.
Yes, 1953 recording technology imposed severe limitations—the microphone placement seems particularly unforgiving—but one has heard other early ’50s harpsichord recordings that don’t assault the ear quite so relentlessly. The instrument simply wasn’t up to the task, and no amount of historical forbearance can entirely excuse the sonic poverty. The decision to omit all repeats, presumably dictated by LP time constraints, further compromises the architectural integrity of Bach’s design.
The Goldberg Variations isn’t merely a collection of thirty character pieces; it’s a carefully proportioned structure in which the repeats function as essential weight-bearing elements. Without them, the work’s monumental symmetry collapses into episodic succession. Leonhardt himself clearly recognized this recording’s limitations—why else would he have returned to the Goldbergs multiple times throughout his career?
His 1976 Deutsche Harmonia Mundi album, made on a magnificent Ruckers-Taskin, represents a quantum leap in every dimension: interpretive depth, technical command, sonic beauty. That later version belongs in any serious Bach collection; this one decidedly does not. Still, historical documents matter, and this is unquestionably that.
Here stands Gustav Leonhardt at the very beginning of his journey to transform how we hear — baroque music—earnest, sometimes miscalculating, but already possessed of formidable intelligence and an unshakeable commitment to period instruments. For scholars tracing the evolution of twentieth-century execution practice, this recording offers valuable evidence. For listeners simply wanting to experience the Goldberg Variations in all their glory, look elsewhere.
The revolution Leonhardt helped inaugurate would achieve far more convincing results—including from Leonhardt himself—in the decades to come. A curio, then. An important one, perhaps, but a curio nonetheless.
