Goldberg: Six Early Works by Ludus Instrumentalis

The name Goldberg carries such freight—those thirty variations that have become a fetish object of our age—that we forget the man himself, or rather the boy. Johann Gottlieb Goldberg died at twenty-eight, and most of what survives comes from his teenage years when he was studying with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and serving Count Brühl in Dresden. These six works, slight but not negligible, arrive trailing footnotes rather than glory.

Ludus Instrumentalis has done the scholarly legwork. The ensemble—its very name suggests playfulness, though there’s nothing frivolous about their approach—performs on period instruments with that particular blend of exactitude and freedom that marks the best historically informed practice. They’ve chosen to treat these pieces not as museum specimens but as living chamber music, and the difference shows in every phrase.

The two proper trio sonatas (C major and A minor) follow the da chiesa pattern without much deviation: slow-fast-slow-fast, the harmonic language firmly rooted in the 1740s, occasionally reaching toward galant ease but never quite abandoning the contrapuntal density Goldberg absorbed from the Bach family. The C major opens with a grave that actually earns its tempo marking—there’s genuine weight here, not just slowness. When the allegro arrives, the violins engage in dialogue that’s more than polite conversation. Real argument, real wit.

But it’s the transcriptions and arrangements that prove most revealing. The Prelude and Fugue in F minor (here transposed to G minor for two violins and cello) was originally a keyboard work, and you can hear Goldberg thinking pianistically—or rather, thinking in terms of hands and fingers rather than bows and breath. The fugue subject doesn’t quite lie naturally under the strings, yet Ludus Instrumentalis makes it speak. The cellist—uncredited in the material I have, which is maddening—phrases with such intelligence that you forget to notice the awkwardness.

The Sonata à 4 in C minor adds a second viola to the usual configuration, and suddenly we’re in richer territory. Goldberg seems to breathe more easily with four voices; the texture thickens without becoming muddy, and there are moments in the central adagio where the harmonic adventurousness suggests he might have developed into something more than a footnote to his teacher’s father. That poignant suspension in measure seventeen—I’ve gone back to it four times—wouldn’t shame C.P.E. Bach.

The recorded sound from WDR’s Klaus-von-Bismarck-Saal captures the instruments with clarity but not clinical coldness. There’s air around each player, and when the harpsichord enters (in the G minor sonata arranged for violin and keyboard), its registration reads as musical choice rather than archaeological reconstruction. The continuo realization throughout shows taste; someone resisted the temptation to over-elaborate.

Should we care about Goldberg beyond the accident of his association with that other Goldberg? On this evidence… yes, provisionally. These aren’t masterworks—the invention flags in a couple of the slow movements, and the B-flat sonata meanders where it should dance. But there’s craft here, and occasional flashes of genuine inspiration. Ludus Instrumentalis makes the strongest possible case, playing with affection that never curdles into special pleading.

The disc won’t displace your favorite Bach recordings, but it fills in a corner of the mid-eighteenth-century chamber music landscape we’ve neglected. And honestly? The sheer pleasure of discovery counts for something. We know this repertoire too well; we’ve worn grooves in our listening habits. Goldberg offers the modest gift of unfamiliarity, and this ensemble honors it with performances that combine scholarship and musicality in equal measure. That’s enough.