Divine Art Records

Catalogue Connection: 50503

  • CD Classico – Andrea Bedetti – 50503

    British pianist Diana Boyle is not well known in Italy but is considered one of the best pianists of old Albion. Her discography reveals that her activity is established definitely around the classical period given that her interpretative focus is on Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms – a line drawn from the base of tonal language, passing through the development of the Vienna School until reaching the composer who having drawn fully on Classicism closes the door of Romanticism to open the way for modernity – a pfor the artist who lives in seclusion in southern Portugal who conducts a coherent search, reflecting and meditating, in order to establish her artistic and aural approach. And so here the two recordings we are considering represent the alpha and omega of that narrative thread of repertoire, Bach’s Goldberg Variations and a miscellanea of Brahms’s piano works.
    [notes on Brahms removed]
    The Bach recording cannot be counted among the increasing number of ‘scrupulously philological’ (“authentic period”) recordings not only for the use of a modern piano. Boyle mentions three points which underscored her point of view to this work: first, as is her habit, she avoided listening to any other recording of the work while studying it, even that of her inspiration, Glenn Gould; second she did not study the work in chronological order but from the Canons, then to the slower, more lyrical sections; third, that in order to understand the work fully she also needed fully to understand the even greater masterpiece of Bach, the Art of Fugue, which she considers the most indispensable work in his output. Now, given these three aspects of her view, we can understand fully her particular interpretation. Compared with the other recordings from the historical ones of Turek and Gould, her result is not typical because her interpretation and the fluency of her musical speech is highly influenced by a very careful, pronounced way of phrasing. For Diana Boyle, the Goldbergs are not a set of separate segments, but a continuous narrative line, and to emphasise this ‘speech’ pattern, uses much rubato (contrary to the likes of the ‘purists’) in a way reflecting the thinking and performance style of the Vienna School and Romantics. So the fragmentary Variations become a continuous flow within which the alternation of the variations appear like scenes on which to pin the phrases: a legato, a rubato.. which again prepare the listener for the format of the later and great work, the Art of Fugue.

    Boyle can stretch the tempo changes so that ‘slow’ becomes slower, reflective and meditative; allegro is accentuated by use of pedals; there is a feeling of dance that reminds us of rococo style, and unexpected dynamic changes (ff to pp) which especially emphasise the passage from tonic to dominant, have almost a theatrical connotation and definitely display a Romantic approach, as examples variation 26 and Quodlibet which almost takes the aspect of a Ländler.

  • Amazon – Anthony MacDonald – 50503

    This is a magical listening experience. Only the brave have recorded The Goldberg Variations using the piano in preference to the harpsichord since Glenn Gould’s benchmark recording of 1955. Ms Boyle is among those brave. She does not attempt to deprive Gould of his speed record (neither did Gould himself make an assault on it when he re-recorded the work in 1981) but brings something quite different though equally exciting to the set.

    Though her fingers are as nimble and fleet as any (witness variations 5, 14 and 20 among others) Ms Boyle gives them second place to her ears. Thus her playing of fugal passages is as clear as a telescope view of distant mountain chains on the brightest of days. While her sound world is a different one from Gould’s: richer, warmer, more nuanced and full of emotional as well as intellectual depth and resonance. The great Bach player Edwin Fischer wrote in the 1950s that a new generation of pianists was striving especially for sounds of brilliance: “the vowels of I and E,” as he put it, in preference to Ah and Oh. He finished, “But are not Oh and Ah the sounds of wonder?” Yes they are. Hats off to Diana Boyle.

  • Diana Boyle – Bach Goldberg Varations

    Diana Boyle – Bach Goldberg Varations

    The first of our new digital-only ‘Intangible Classics’ series and of the Diana Boyle edition; a superb rendition of this timeless masterpiece. Though recorded in 2003, this recording has never been available until now and demonstrates Diana Boyle’s deep and thoughtful approach to the works of Bach.

    Like Die Kunst der Fuge, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 899, have come to be seen as one of the pinnacles of keyboard writing, not only of the baroque era but of all time. The Aria with diverse variations for a harpsichord with two manuals as it is formally named is the capstone of the Clavierübung publication project which was finalised in 1741. Amazingly, like much of Bach’s work, it remained an esoteric and little-known work until introduced into the repertoire by Rudolf Serkin in the 1920s.

    Diana Boyle is a fine pianist who records little but prepares each recording with years of thought, consideration and meditation on the music. She moved to the Goldberg Variations after recording Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier as a stepping stone to the inscrutable Art of Fugue. She avoided listening to any other versions, because as she says, “I need to find my own voice when studying these masterpieces and then try to express those thoughts at the keyboard.” Like all of Boyle’s work this is a very carefully prepared and well crafted performance, an excellent addition to the library of recordings of this work.