Johann Sebastian Bach “Goldberg Variations”

Program
Johann Sebastian Bach – Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

Alexey Botvinov, one of Ukraine’s most prominent pianists, is already well known to our audience. Born in Odessa into a family of musicians, he has performed in more than 45 countries, has appeared at London’s Wigmore Hall, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Zurich’s Tonhalle, Bonn’s Beethovenhaus, the Berlin Philharmonic and Hamburg Philharmonic, and has toured in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Canada, South Africa, China, and many other countries.

In 2015, Botvinov founded the Odessa Classics International Music Festival and is its president and artistic director. In the same year, the pianist was awarded the title of Merited Artist of Ukraine, Ukraine’s highest artistic distinction, and in 2020 he was honoured with the Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy. Since the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army, Botvinov has organised charity concerts abroad and donated the funds raised to Ukrainian civilians and the army. In 2022, the concerts of the 8th Odessa Classics International Music Festival were held in exile, and the closing concert took place at the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Concert Hall.

The pianist will perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s challenging Goldberg Variations in a Vilnius Festival recital. Botvinov is the only pianist in the world to have performed this work more than 300 times. The 300th anniversary performance of the Variations took place in a recital at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall in 2017.

Goldberg Variations, written in 1741, are often called not only the most ambitious harpsichord composition, but also the greatest publication of the entire baroque era (published in 1742). The Variations reflect Bach’s seemingly infinite knowledge of the art of composition and his command of a variety of styles. This super cycle is a study of baroque variations, a microcosm of Bach’s keyboard music, in which the composer captured the experience, history and memory of his epoch. Another work of this importance and dimension, covering a huge area of the musical world, was Ludwig van Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, completed in 1823.