It takes some mental adjustment to hear Bach's Goldberg Variations played on a harp, but Welsh harpist
Catrin Finch has done an exceptional job with both her arrangement and her performance of Bach's keyboard masterpiece. Her arrangement is sensitive to the musical and the emotional values of the music; she successfully translates the sense of technical difficulty and the expressive depths of the original, and her playing is superb. The listener is fully aware of the challenges of
Finch's arrangement, and of the graceful virtuosity and expressiveness with which she executes them. The joy, sorrow, wit, humor, and sublime beauty of the original are all present in her performances. Purists may have little patience with the idea of a transcription, but other listeners may be won over by the sheer loveliness of
Finch's playing.
Deutsche Grammophon's digital sound is cool, clear, and vivid.