The Craig Ogden Ensemble

David Juritz, violin
Craig Ogden, classical guitar
Adrian Bradbury, Cello

A Baroque Journey Towards the Goldberg Variations

Since its 2021 release, David Juritz’s recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations with Craig Ogden has had over two million streams on Spotify. Together with cellist, Adrian Bradbury, they trace the sometimes surprising musical route that leads to one of music’s greatest masterpieces.

The word baroque is derived from the Portuguese, baroco, meaning ‘a pearl of irregular or bulbous shape’.  David Juritz writes:

“I wanted, in this programme, to explore 150 years of music more diverse than any other apart from our own. I’ve ignored towering figures such as Handel, Vivaldi and Telemann and chosen
instead to follow an erratic path across Europe and the British Isles towards one of music’s greatest masterpieces, The Goldberg Variations by J S Bach.”

One of the commonalities of the baroque period with our own is the fluidity with which genres overlap, leaving little distinction between popular song and dance and what we might today call ‘art music’. The bass line with which Henry Purcell’s Music for a While begins would be as much at home in any smoke-filled jazz club as it is in a recital hall. Just as many jazz and rock musicians use either ‘blues’ or ‘rhythm’ changes (the chord sequence of ‘I got Rhythm’). Charpentier uses another ubiquitous baroque baseline, the romanesca, in Sans frayeur dans ce bois – and just like Leonard Cohen’s songs, Charpentier’s is more than a little sensuous!”

Stravinsky famously said, “Good composers borrow, great composers steal” and so, we end the first half with a pearl pocketed by the most distinguished thief of all; Johann Sebastian Bach’s arrangement of the Andante from Marcello’s Oboe concerto in D minor.

In 1741, Bach published the fourth volume of his Clavier-Übung, a series of works for the keyboard. Originally entitled ‘Aria with assorted variations’ which are now better known as the Goldberg
Variations.

Johann Gottlieb Goldberg was a brilliant young musician employed by Count von Keyserlinck, the Russian ambassador and lifelong supporter of Bach. According to Bach’s first biographer, one of Goldberg’s duties was to play Bach’s variations to soothe the count back to sleep during his frequent bouts of insomnia. Although there is no evidence either that Bach wrote them for Goldberg, or that Keyserlinck commissioned them, it is probable that the young Polish musician was their first regular performer.

Bach arranged his 30 variations in 10 groups of three with the aria repeated at the end. The first variation of each group often has elements of a popular dance or is a miniature of a musical genre (10 – fughetta, 16 – French overture). The second of each group is a duet, often involving showy display, and every third variation with the exception of 30 is a canon, each of increasing complexity as the variations progress. A clear sense of narrative runs through the work with successive variations often developing an idea hinted at in the closing bars of the preceding one.

©David Juritz

Pre-concert dinner offer with the Grosvenor Hotel

We are delighted to bring you a new and exclusive Pre-Concert Supper offer with The Grosvenor Hotel in Stockbridge!

The Chef at The Grosvenor has crafted an exciting menu especially for dining before the Friday 17th May Concert, so that you can eat at the Grosvenor before you take your premium reserved seats at 7pm at St Peters Church for the Craig Ogden Ensemble Concert.

View the menu: Menu for Grosvenor Stockbridge Music Dinner offer

Book your special supper for £35pp by calling the Grosvenor on 01264 810606 before 10th May to enhance your evening with this wonderful treat!

This concert is kindly sponsored by one our supporters.