New Classical Tracks: The Bach/Gould Project

The Catalyst Quartet - The Bach/Gould project (Azica)

"Composed for music lovers, to refresh their spirits." That's the subtitle Bach gave to his Goldberg variations, a set of keyboard pieces thought to be written for a young harpsichordist named Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. In the case of this debut recording from The Catalyst Quartet, music lovers will find their spirits refreshed with a new arrangement of this iconic work.

It was the genius of Bach and of pianist Glenn Gould — the artist responsible for shining a new light on Bach's Goldberg Variations — that provided the initial inspiration for the Bach/Gould Project. "I think the original inspiration came from a sort of programming brainstorming session where we were trying to discover new works, overlooked works, and we stumbled across the Glenn Gould String Quartet," recalls cellist Karlos Rodriguez. "To try and make a case for programming that, the natural next step would be to the play the Goldberg Variations. And following that, we quickly realized that a string quartet version doesn't exist and we'd have to write our own. And so that's how it came to be, originally."

So how did The Catalyst Quartet come to be, you might be wondering? Violinist Karla Donehew-Perez says there was one common denominator that brought them together. "We all participated in the Sphinx Competition," she explains, "and this competition promotes diversity in classical music. … And they have created a lot of educational programs and other endeavors and one of the things that they are very interested in doing is fostering young artists' careers, specifically the alumni of their competition and 5 years ago, they wanted to start a quartet and foster a young string quartet. So that's how we came to be."

According to Karlos, creating this unique four-voiced version of the Goldberg Variations for string quartet was a step-by-step process. "We first all arranged our own versions, four different versions, of the aria, which is the first statement piece of the Goldberg Variations. And then we put that sort of together in a mixed bag of all of our ideas to sort of make sense of that so we were all sort of represented in one piece. And then from that, the 30 variations were divided equally. Of course, we all selfishly chose our favorite variations that we wanted to arrange first. And little by little, we whittled it down to what you hear on the album."

Each member of the Catalyst Quartet grew up listening to Glenn Gould's famous recording of these variations, and at first it was that interpretation they had in their heads. Karla says Bach's original manuscript was their guide. "So throughout the whole process, we tried to stay as true to what was written in the score as possible — to the point of even keeping the register the same throughout the whole piece. Of course, there's influence, but that was our main goal."

"I think with any project, you start out with your inspiration sort of thing," Karlos adds. "Or even when you're designing the décor of a room, you have your inspiration piece which informs what pillows and curtains you're going to use. But in the end, that original inspiration could just be the size of a seashell in a huge room. And little by little, the recordings of the Goldberg Variations that exist sort of fade away, and what was being created was the new focus."

It was Gould's only published composition that generated the original focus of this project. As they began to work out their parts for this rarely heard work, Karlos says it was as if they were peeling away the layers to unearth a Bach String Quartet. "It was almost more difficult to make sense of the Gould quartet, and that was almost like uncovering some great masterpiece and trying to make sense of the thing. Because there aren't very many great recordings. But it was, in a way, more challenging because it is so dense and so complex to sort of organize what's going on in that piece. Equally, both sides of the album were a tremendous discovery for us."

The Catalyst Quartet: making new discoveries, and sharing them with you.

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