Category: Piano

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    Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

    Bach wrote it as a sleeping pill. Gould turned it into a manifesto.

    The count's insomnia legend is charming — and almost certainly invented, appearing 52 years after Bach's death. What actually changed the Goldberg Variations' fate was a 23-year-old Canadian pianist treating Bach less like a sleeping pill and more like a…

  • Chopin’s Prelude in D-flat major, Op. 28 No. 15 ‘Raindrop’

    Rain on a Rooftop in Majorca

    Chopin denied the piece was about rain. His partner George Sand insisted he composed it in a storm-wracked monastery, half-convinced he was dying. The truth lies in five minutes of music where a single repeating note pulses like a heartbeat,…