GOLDBERG Beyond the Variations
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Johann Gottlieb Goldberg
Genre:
Chamber
Label: Bridge
Magazine Review Date: 02/2017
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 59
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: BRIDGE9478
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Sonata for 2 Violins & Continuo |
Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, Composer
Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, Composer Jörg-Michael Schwarz, Director Rebel |
Author: Jonathan Freeman-Attwood
Most unusual is Goldberg’s instinct for harmonic theatricality; the G minor Sonata even hints at something Zelenka-like, Bohemian flights checked only by a decidedly didactic contrapuntal conscience, and curiously unadventurous instrumental writing. The more one listens, the more one hears the slightly disorientating and dogmatically eccentric world of WF Bach.
The performances from Rebel under Jörg-Michael Schwarz are nothing if not committed (Goldberg’s taut allegros are certainly intense affairs), with the violins quickly settling as natural sparring partners, and always solidly underpinned by the fleet-of-foot continuo. Yet it’s all pretty unyielding in uniformity of articulation and dynamic. High positions tend towards sharpness and, alongside an insistent exaggeration of conceits from movement to movement, this can make for wearing listening.
Mollifying contrasts – which the dour A minor Sonata cries out for – are simply not part of Rebel’s armoury; the finest period players would seek out poetic sensibility from the obsessive rigour and exhibitionism of a composer described contemporaneously (and not surprisingly on this hearing) as ‘melancholic and stubborn’. Nevertheless, for all its earnestness, Rebel have successfully extended our awareness of a household name to a musician with his own legacy, but one who never made the age of 30.
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