GREAT RECORDINGS phase 19

J.S BACH
Goldberg Variations

Rosalyn Tureck

5 09647 2 (D&T)
5 09648 2 (Angel)

Mono
ADD
Recorded 1957 and 1959
2:38:23 (2CD)

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These recordings were made in No.3 Studio, Abbey Road, in 1957 and 1959.

Rosalyn Tureck (1914–2003) was one of the great 20th-century exponents of Bach on the piano: for her, playing Bach was ‘an act of worship’. Rob Cowan’s notes for this issue give fascinating background to an intriguing career: for instance, Tureck made her Carnegie Hall debut at 17 playing the theremin, and her concerto debut with Brahms’s second under Ormandy.

But it was as a Bach player and scholar that Tureck made her name. Her very personal insight apparently began with a teenage epiphany: ‘I felt as if I had gone through a small door into an infinite green universe,’ she once said in interview, adding how ‘this image has stayed with me all my life.’

On this set, three major works from the Clavierübung are joined by the early Aria variata BWV 989, which has not previously appeared on CD.