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Bach - Goldberg Variations - Joseph Payne, harpsichord 
on BIS

Flac

http://ottosbaroquemusick-bachradio.blogspot.com/2009/11/bach-goldberg-variations-joseph-payne.html

I just listened yesterday to Joseph Payne's Goldbergs on BIS. I was a bit surprised at first by what I was hearing, then, as the recording went on, I began to appreciate it, and even like it. Here's the rub.

Payne has decided to fully appropriate the score. While in the first playing of each variation he follows the score to the letter, the repeats feature a truly personal ornamentation, augmentation and even improvisation. At first, this stunned me - even in the repeat of the first part of the aria, he goes out on a limb. I recalled how András Schiff's recording rubbed me the wrong way because of his transgressions.

But, then, as the disc went on, I started to understand what Payne was doing. He was adding much more than a mere interpretation to the work, and was doing what, undoubtedly, Bach or other performers would have done at the time.--Kirk McElhearn


English harpsichordist, organist, and clavicembalist Joseph Payne is a scholarly, intelligent, and gifted artist who has amassed an impressively voluminous output of recordings on period keyboard instruments. While many players of pre-piano keyboards are happy to limit themselves to exploring a single composer or two's work in depth, Payne has recorded entire manuscript collections and has delved very deeply into the available repertoire that predates the Romantic era. In 1985 Payne enjoyed the privilege of being the first organist to record the then newly discovered Neumeister Chorale Preludes attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach.