[This from the current New York Times.  I'm dying to hear Perahia's new
recording of The Goldberg Variations, which he played in this recital
two days ago in New York.  Has anyone heard the recording yet?]

   Murray Perahia: For Bach and Soulmate, Song Is Hardly the Whole Story

   By PAUL GRIFFITHS

   Murray Perahia began his Great Performers recital at Avery Fisher
   Hall on Sunday afternoon with a group of Bach chorale preludes as
   transcribed by Busoni.  "Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland" was a gem of
   counterpoint in which the voices were equally clear, equally melodious
   and equally distinct in color.  There was a beautifully soft bass
   line - a special characteristic of Mr. Perahia's, freely and wonderfully
   used throughout the recital - and a firm sounding of the chorale
   tune.  In "Nun Freut Euch, Lieben Christen," the rushing right hand
   was all joy.  In "Ich Ruf' zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ," what mattered
   was the slow melody, and the want that it created for a much larger
   musical span.

   That want was duly satisfied - and how - by the "Goldberg" Variations.
   Mr. Perahia did not only make his piano sing the opening "Aria," he
   had it sing in three subtly different voices one after the other,
   voices arising from the different registers of the melody and all
   concurring in phrasing and feeling.

   Singing tone remained of paramount importance, not just singing melody
   but also, as in the chorale preludes, singing polyphony.  Sometimes
   the song in a movement would not finish until the last few notes of
   the final harmony had been sung into place, giving musical life to
   a gesture which could seem merely functional, a matter of routine.
   In Mr.  Perahia's view, nothing in the piece is routine.

   But song is not the whole story.  He responded to Bach's humor,
   especially in movements where some bumptious little figure goes
   leap-frogging down the octaves.  The gigue-style variation provided
   an example, with laughter in the running figuration, and the comedy
   was given a reprise in the next movement.

   As the performance went on, so the connections began to broaden and
   deepen, and what had opened as a suite of character variations started
   to come into view as one whole body of music.  After the Adagio -
   where the climax in the second half was prepared and executed with
   a purely musical poignancy, acutely to the point - all the variations
   seemed to flow on from one another, the relationships of motif and
   harmony effortlessly revealing themselves, the lines singing still
   and now also gamboling.  The last variation, the "Quodlibet," was
   part of this flow of song, humor and athleticism, and at the same
   time it referred back to the comic pomposity of the French overture
   at the start of the work's second half.

   After this, the repeat of the "Aria" came just as it should.
   Simplicity was being recovered, but it was both the same and not
   the same.  The notes were, yes, identical to those that had been
   heard an hour before.  But what one might hazily have recognized as
   implications in that first playing were now returning as full, solid
   memories, Bach's memories and, installed with Bach's, Mr. Perahia's:
   memories not to be forgotten.

Scott Morrison