The Goldberg Variations: Meditations on Solitude, review: intimate, austere, but not that solitary

An astounding virtuosity: the Ysaÿe Trio - Andrew Logan
An astounding virtuosity: the Ysaÿe Trio - Andrew Logan

The worldwide web has been swarming with filmed online concerts since lockdown began, but none that I’ve seen so far has tried to use the video medium in a creative way—until the preview of The Goldberg Variations: Meditations on Solitude came my way on Thursday.

This new version of Bach’s series of 30 variations on a beautiful slow Aria comes from start-up company Greengage and is the brainchild of director and conductor Jonathan Berman. For him the variations are all about the joy and challenge of solitude, an idea prompted in part by the work’s genesis: it was composed by Bach to help overcome the insomnia of a Russian nobleman, Count Kaiserling. Berman chose 30 texts on loneliness, which are read by Simon Russell Beale in between each of the variations. These are performed not on the harpsichord, as is normal, but by the Ysaÿe string trio from the Netherlands.

Appropriately for a film made in lockdown conditions, the production has an intimate, austere feel. The trio is in a tiny music room somewhere in Holland, Russell Beale in another tiny room, with just a chair and few objects on a table. Some of the texts are short and light (AA Milne makes an appearance) some are more grand, like the (for me) somewhat windy effusions of Walt Whitman, but Russell Beale wisely sticks to a middle ground of expression for all of them, without over-emphasis. From time to time the flow is interrupted by black and white photographs from the young Austrian photographer Kristina Feldhammer, whose moody eroticism seems miles away from the formal dress of the music.

Simon Russell Beale - Andrew Logan
Simon Russell Beale - Andrew Logan

The texts certainly contained some stunning insights on solitude: the one from José Saramago is still haunting my mind now. The real glory of the film is the performance from the Ysaÿe Trio, who display an astounding virtuosity in the fast variations and bring an immense long-drawn-out intensity to the slow minor-key ones, in a way no keyboard player could rival.

Though it’s hugely enjoyable, the film actually undermines Berman’s idea that the music is all about solitude. The dances and canons and folk-songs of Bach’s Goldberg Variations mostly express a cheerful companionability. Rather than fortifying the melancholy of the texts, they actually provide an antidote to them. Which when you think about it, makes a lot of sense. Because why would an insomniac Russian want to be made even more miserable?

To view The Goldberg Variations: Meditations on Solitude, visit greengageventures.com on May 31. Performance released at 5.00pm. Tickets required. Available for 30 days.