For nine months, Alexandre Tharaud left the concert hall to find his way to the piano Olympus: to his own interpretation of Bach's Goldberg Variations, one of the most intellectually and technically demanding piano works ever. "Like an archaeologist" he explored this music, says the pianist, "I dived into the unknown, I was a seeker". The artistic result: a triumphant concert series, now followed by the new recording - and that immediately as a CD album with DVD incl. concert & interview and as a vinyl LP. "It was wonderful to look at each note from different angles, to spend hours on each bar," says Tharaud, before summing up: "To play Bach, you have to find modesty, humility. " Tharaud has taken a similar path before, when he presented his outstanding recording of Bach piano concertos. With the sonata album by the great Bach contemporary Scarlatti, he opened up new avenues in the interpretation of Baroque piano music on the modern piano. The balance between crystal-clear structural awareness, brilliance and expressive fire of emotion is also achieved in the Goldberg Variations, with which, after Chopin, Haydn, Mozart and the world of 1920s swing, he follows on from his earlier Baroque albums. Tharaud is here undisputedly in the succession of the legendary Glenn Gould. The latter's famous recording of the great cycle of variations, marked by universal mathematical relationships, was one of the first records the pianist owned as a teenager ..