One of the projects that I had started when this pandemic began, was to really tackle Bach's Goldberg Variations. "The Goldberg Variations" are a set of 30 variations set on an Aria theme. It takes over 40 minutes to play it through without repeats and nearly an hour and a half if one were to do all the repeats! It's truly amazing how Bach was able to conjure up so many ideas from one single theme.

Because it was meant to be played on a double keyboard harpsichord it is actually technically quite tricky to play on the piano. Each variation is quite short though (1~4 minutes long) so I had been playing it as a warm up piece for ages, choosing a few of the variations before starting my main practice.

Because it's such a vast work (46 pages of music just to give you an idea) and quite hard to bring up to performance level I had never considered playing it in a concert. Therefore I had never really attempted to really go into depth with it nor memorize it.

But when the pandemic started and I had to cancel all my concerts and my teaching and was stuck at home, I decided this would be the time that I should attempt to bring it up to a level which I would be satisfied with. This has been a true blessing as it really kept me occupied! AND it still does!

The more I work on it, the more there is to do! It seems never-ending!