Gilded
Goldbergs are
put here when the project started rather than in the year and
at the op. number of their completion. Beginning purely
practically — transcription of a few Goldberg
Variations for
two pianos so as to be able to play and relish their ingenuities
with ease and clarity, it slowly and shyly entered further and
further reaches of fantasy, still always based firmly in the
sheer social and artistic delights of this domestic medium.
"Shyly" is an understatement. I felt guilty
and ashamed. But desire knows no curb: nature's voice
triumphed over the murmurings of compunction, and what had begun
as occasional and intermittent finished as a comprehensive coverage
of Bach's entire span from aria to aria,
an odyssey of styles and techniques, dedicated for the most part
to friends, colleagues, pupils "pictured within" (often incorporating
their way of playing), that ran alongside some five years'-worth
of other, more limited, original compositions.