Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

This recording rounds off two years dedicated to Bach's 30 variations, interspersed with pleasant encounters with the public, in particular during the Cafés Baroques concert series at the Arsenal in Metz. For me this was an opportunity to explore with humour and passion the various characters, forms and compositional processes, as well as the historical context and our own contemporary relationship to this master-work. I devoured every book on the subject that I could lay my hands on. For a while, two questions remained unanswered. First, why is the Overture in the middle of the cycle, rather than at the beginning? In the end, I found a cosmic explanation that I present in the text below. The second question concerns the first two variations, which do not seem to fit the usual scheme. This is why I consider them as an introduction and start each subsequent group of three variations with a canon, leaving the quodlibet to stand on its own at the end.