A few weeks ago while having coffee at QV.s, a flyer caught my eye of a pianist, arms outstretched by the sea. Black and white. Very professional. It was an advertisement for Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, who would be performing Bach.s Goldberg Variations at St. Mary the Virgin in Oak Bay.

I was hemming and hawing about whether to go. Yes, it would be a nice concert. But then my budget had gone a little bit over this month. Going online, it looked like in addition to general admission, there were ‘artist’ or ‘underemployed’ tickets. But then there was an additional surcharge to purchase online. No thanks. They also had tickets at Ivy.s Bookshop. So there.s where I went. I.ve never purchased the ‘discounted’ tickets before and, to be honest, I felt awkward. The store was quite busy too; I had to wait for it to clear out a little bit. There really was no logical reason for that, but that.s me. So I asked the lady, ‘Ah, I wonder if you have tickets for the show and if there.s requirements for the discount tickets?’. To which she had the best reply, ‘Well, sir, you would know best!’. Tickets in hand it was a good day.

Arriving at St. Mary the Virgin, the usher takes the ticket and I ask her where the best place to sit is. She.s also a piano player and points out if you sit close to the front on the left, you can see the pianists fingers. Good idea. St. Mary the Virgin is an Anglican Church. Modern architecture. It.s interesting how they achieve the height and the open space in the nave. The nave is laid out with a central corridor with pews on the left and right. The weight of the roof is transferred into the foundation by means of a glulam or engineered wood structure. The spans did not necessitate intermediate supports so the impression–especially with the graceful curves built into the glulam columns–is one of effortless openness. Looking around, another surprise: 6′ Baldwin, not Steinway. My first piano was a Baldwin. A little spinet. I.m very fond of Baldwin and it makes me happy to see them.

Now for the music. Did I tell you I was excited?–I.ve heard this piece hundreds of times but never live. Here was my chance. I wasn.t wearing my watch, but from asking my kind neighbour, it appears the concert began just after 2:35 and ended just before 3:30. So this Goldberg clocked in at just under 55 minutes. Not absolutely sure though. Since I.m a good Canadian, here.s the obligatory Gould comparison. His schizophrenic 1955 recording clocks in under 45 minutes and the mechanistically meditative 1981 recording comes in at 52 minutes. At 55 minutes, Iwaasa.s able to bring out the lyricism of the piece. You can hear the spaces between the notes a little bit–I alway enjoy that, the sound of the decay. You can tap your foot to most of the variations, but not all of them. It reminded me how rhythmic Bach can be. Forward driving. Music flowing over itself, beside itself, tumbling out of a limitless reservoir. It seems a shame that a lot of these forward driving rhythms were lost in the Classical era.

Iwaasa.s playing is very clean. Light on the pedal. While I could.t see the pedals (obscured by the pews in front), I could see when she was applying the pedal because her calves were visible through a slit on her dress. If that is too prurient may I be struck down! This was Sunday and I was in church after all! To me, clean playing means well thought out playing–no ‘hiding behind the pedal’ as it were. The shape and nuance of each line comes out by the strength of the mind.s interpretation. Another thing that I was thinking of is how full bodied a piano sounds in real life. It must be one of the harder instruments to record. Either that or it must be hard for speakers to reproduce its range. The parts of the Goldberg that descend into the nether registers exude weight.

There was fun after the concert as well. They had an question and answer session with the artist. This was cool. They should do this all the time. The organizer asked the first question. It turns out Iwaasa.s portfolio consists of many modern works and premieres as well written by living composers. He asked how it was like playing something by Bach (who, we were reminded at the beginning of the concert, would have celebrated his 330th birthday recently). She responded that well, you couldn.t email or call the composer to ask for performance input *laughter*. She also talked a bit about the relationship between interpreter and composer as a kind of ‘dialogue with the dead’ which I thought was a neat idea. By the way, she.s very well spoken. I asked the second question on her decision on the tempo. Actually a two part question: also asked her whether she had experimented with different tempi. To which she replied that she decides what tempo to play by the vibe from the audience: it.s not a ‘one tempo fits all’ scenario. I thought that was a very good answer. It reminded me of one of Furtwangler.s responses when asked the same question: he said he figures out the tempo ‘by listening to the music’. Sometimes the best responses are the simplest. As to different tempi, part of the question depends on how much risk she wants to take on stage. With so many crossings over of hands the breakneck speed can be dangerous! There was another question by the church organist who admired how her playing brought out and was faithful to the structure of the piece. They talked a bit on the tripartite structure of the Goldberg and I thought of how wonderful that there was all this order and form in Bach.s music. Like a cosmos unto itself. There were many other questions: did she like the 1955 or the 1981 Gould?–she admired the ‘exuberance’ of the 1955 recording but listens more to the 1981 recording. But prior to the performance she stayed away from Gould in order to find her own voice. Who were her mentors?–her teachers. She also mentioned that her pedagogical roots were three removes away from Beethoven. Fascinating! Also learned that the Goldberg Variations were written for a patron who wanted something to listen to to combat insomnia. There was a comment that it would be hard to fall asleep listening to this piece. Then a correction that it wasn.t to put people to sleep but to have something to listen to to ease the insomnia. She also talked about how, as the variations go further from the main theme, sometimes Bach would recall them by inserting contemporary songs with lyrics along the lines of ‘Now come back…’. And so on. A splendid idea to have a question and answer session with the artist.

In the program notes, Iwaasa cites a passage from Kundera.s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Kundera in turn cites Pascal:

Variations are like a voyage. But that voyage does not lead through the infinitude of the exterior world. In one of his pensées, Pascal says that man lives between the abyss of the infinitely large and the abyss of the infinitely small. The voyage of variations leads into the other infinitude, into the infinite diversity of the interior world hidden in all things.

The abyss between the infinitely large and the infinitely small is of course the section Pascal headed with the words infini – rien number 418 in Lafuma.s numeration and 233 in Brunschvicg, otherwise known as Pascal.s Wager. Pascal.s Wager is the existential plight of man, who, suspended between infinity and nothing must wager with God or against God, though reason will not help him make the correct choice. It.s interesting because it attempts to justify faith on probabilistic grounds: there is nothing to lose and everything to gain if you wager with God, so why not go with the odds? For Kundera, the abyss of the infinitely small is the unbearable burden of lacking the being we loved. The variation form for Kundera.s Beethoven is the exploration of this infinitesimally small yet infinite loss. This makes sense for Beethoven, who, always the titan, would have (metaphorically) taken the left hand side of Pascal.s Wager, wagering for art and against God, ruing his loss forevermore. But I can.t help but to think that Bach, with his blue collar faith, would have wagered with God and with all the odds on his side so that there would be in the Goldberg Variations a joyful God of sixteen measures, full of life, love, and hope.

And that.s what I heard in today.s performance: the exuberance of all life unbounded, all the voices tripping over one another in the exuberance of the variation form. Thank you to Iwaasa for a wonderful performance and thank you to the Oak Bay Matinée Concert Series for bringing it all together.