• Text size         • Send this article to a friend   • Print
this article  Joanna MacGregor, City Hall, Glasgow  Joanna
MacGregor, the most free-spirited of artists, produced a
fantastically unpredictable and controversial ending to her
performance yesterday of Bach’s Goldberg Variations; so before
charting the trajectory of her interpretation, we’d better deal
with that.  After the last, and most introspective, of the three
minor-key variations in the colossal piece, the reflective
clouds were dispelled by the warm, rippling breeze of major-key
sonorities that MacGregor conjured from the piano.  Loading
article content  Then, with big, booming bass notes, organ-like
chords and a sense of near-rhapsodic gallop in the music, she
was into the final furlong, heading for the reprise of the
serenely calm little aria that is the heart and start of the
piece.  And what she did was extraordinary. As the waves of
clangorous sound dispersed, you realised that she had actually
started playing the aria while the pealing