I always thought that Gould's two recordings of the Golbergs were the benchmarks by which others should be judged. The '55 performance is full of energy. Full of spice and joy. The '82 performance is that of a mature man who has the patina of years applied to his musicianship. I always found it more than a bit ironic that Gould died of a stroke (in his 50's) just after recording the second set (and before it was released).
However, there are others.
After listenting the the PT50 (the US National Public Radio's collection of the 50 pieces of classical music that you must own - there's another thread on that here), I was drawn to Murray Perahia's performance of the Goldbergs. They are totally different. Not as mechanical. They lilt, they sing, they have unbounded joy. For example, Goulds version of the quodlibet sounds, to me, at least, much like a march. Perahia makes it sound like a drinking song (which it is based on). Compare the 1st variation. Gould pounds out those bass notes, Perahia has them accent the music. Gould's analysis is based on rhythms going from variation to variation (he said so in the interview enclosed with the CD). Perahia, however, makes them sound like dances (which they are!).
Having rambled about that, there's another performance that grabs me: Andras Schiff. His reading is to perform all the repeats. The amazing things is that when he does the repeats he adds the ornamentation - all the trills, mordents and stuff. It's my understanding that that was the custom in Bach's time. The repeats were there, in part, at least, for the soloist to show off his virtuosity. Schiff does that perfectly.
The other nice thing about Perahia and Schiff is that neither of them can be heard humming with the music.
Just my uneducated opinion.
Best regards,
George
Topic: Goldberg Variations