In the first edition of Grove's Dictionary, Hubert Parry declared that the Goldberg Variations were "never played in public in consequence of the difficulty of giving due effect on one row of keys to the rapid crossing passages wich are written for two" - for Bach had specified the work as for "Clavicimbal mit 2 Manualen", and another half-century was to pass before the revival of the harpsichord from obsolescence. To a great extent this revival was due to Wanda Landowska, who after studying in her native Warsaw and in Berlin had moved to Paris ad immersed herself whole-heartedly in research into the interpretation of 17th and 18th-century keyboard music. Though she had already played Bach on the piano, in 1903 she opted decisively for the harpsichord, energetically championing it in European concert tours, articles and a book: later she had an instrument built to her own specification by Pleyel and started teaching at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. After the war she transferred to Paris, where she lectured at the Sorbonne and gave classes at the Ecole Normale, then visited the USA for the first time and made her first gramophone records. In 1925 she settled at St. Leu-la-Forêt, north of Paris, where she established her own school; and it was in its concert hall that, after years of study of the work and exploration of its background, she first performed the Goldberg Variations in May 1933. The recording of it she made in Paris a few months later - here reissued in a moderns format - created a sensation: it was the first time that this masterpiece of Bach's, universally recognised as among the greatest of all variation sets, had ever beeb recorded - although even then it was issued in a limited "Society" edition because few other than musical scholars knew the work. ...

Lionel Salter, 1987

Eric Wen