Bach's Goldberg Variations

The chapel in Autal, with its warm architectural clarity, provides a fitting setting for Bach's Goldberg Variations.

From a deceptively simple Aria, Johann Sebastian Bach unfolds a variation cycle of extraordinary formal variety: intricate canons, dance-like movements, virtuosic passages and moments of quiet contemplation.

Few works in the history of music balance intellectual rigour with immediate listening pleasure as these 30 variations do: you can follow their construction with close attention - or simply surrender to the sound.

Overarching everything is the return of the Aria, which after 30 variations is the same - yet heard differently. In the closing Quodlibet, Bach opens the work into playfulness and wit. This is precisely where the music reveals how alive it still is: clear in thought, but also full of humour and surprising freedom.

Fatjona Maliqi is a pianist who has made Bach's Goldberg Variations distinctly her own. The work has been part of her international concert repertoire for years. Her interpretation was recognised at the International Rosalyn Tureck Bach Competition in New York. Returning again and again to a work of this stature demands not only virtuosity, but stamina, formal clarity and a willingness to keep discovering new layers in the music.