Bachs Goldberg-variaties door Abel Hox

Abel Hox

Abel Hox was born in 1998 and graduated summa cum laude from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in 2022. He is currently Artist in Residence at the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo, Belgium, where he studies with Avedis Kouyoumdjian and Frank Braley. Additionally, he studies with Enrico Pace and Andre Gallo in Imola at the Academia 'Incontri con il Maestro' and has attended masterclasses with Severin von Eckardstein, Ronald Brautigam, Andras Schiff, and others. In recent seasons, he has performed with the Symphony Orchestra of Flanders, Casco Phil, Heritage Sinfonietta, and the orchestra Nuove Musiche, and has been invited to festivals such as Beethovenfest, the Encuentro de Música Santander, Antwerp Spring Festival, Crans-Montana Festival, and Schiermonnikoog Chamber Music Festival. Abel has a broad musical interest with a particular fondness for the music of Bach and Beethoven. Outside of music, he enjoys spending time in nature and loves literature, cycling, and mountain climbing.

Bach's Goldberg Variations

Bach's Goldberg Variations consist of an aria followed by thirty variations. In doing so, Bach does not so much take the melody of the aria as a starting point, but rather the harmonic scheme and the bass line. From that seemingly simple foundation, a complete musical world emerges: dances, toccatas, intimate character pieces, virtuosic outbursts, and strictly constructed canons alternate. Every third variation is a canon, with the interval becoming progressively larger, from prime to none. That may sound like advanced mathematics, but with Bach, it never becomes merely a demonstration of craftsmanship. There always remains movement, humor, melancholy, and human warmth. For pianists, the Goldberg Variations constitute one of the great monuments of the repertoire. It is music that tests technique, concentration, polyphonic listening, and a sense of form to the utmost. At the same time, it offers exceptional interpretive freedom. Perhaps that is the reason why every generation of musicians returns to this work time and again: nothing definitive can be said about it, and precisely for that reason, it remains inviting. For Abel Hox, the Goldberg Variations have by now become more than an impressive masterpiece of piano literature. It is a work with which he has been engaged for a long time and intensively, and in which he continues to discover new layers.