Gold Mountain

On Saturday I went downtown to a concert at the Scots Church. The program - Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach - performance on harpsichord- CLICK.

Goldberg variations, so many associations, where to start?

Maybe from the beginning...
It started with Augustus III Saxon becoming the king of Poland.
As a Saxon Elector, he was also the king of Johann Sebastian Bach, who lived in Saxony.
J.S. Bach saw already during the times of Augustus II "the Strong" Saxon, what was going on and approached the royal court in Warsaw with an application for the position of court composer.
He wrote a special Catholic mass for this occasion (Mass in B minor).
After a considerable delay, the application was approved and Bach realised what was squeaking at the royal court.

Squealed the Russian ambassador - Herman Klaus von Keyserling, who suffered from insomnia and hired a young, very talented composer and harpsichordist, born in Gdańsk, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (Gold Mountain) to play for him to help him fall asleep.

During Keyserling's visit to Dresden, J.G. Goldberg met the Bach family, and J.S. Bach commemorated this acquaintance with a composition

I encountered the Goldberg Variations many years ago, thanks to Glenn Gould's famous recording - CLICK.

This recording was so popular that I did not look around for anything else, so something else came to me in the promotion from Australian Chamber Choir.

Scots Church, just in the centre of Melbourne...

Nearby there are many churches - Baptists, Methodists, the Catholic Cathedral of St. Peter, the Anglican Cathedral of St. Paul - these were the times of gold rush in nearby Ballarat, and since gold attracts a sin then there was a search for salvation.

There are banks squeezed between the churches - this red sign on the glass skyscraper is the symbol of the Westpac bank.
Complete harmony.

The disadvantage was the location of the church - right in the middle of Melbourne, there is no way to get there by car, for my wife taking a tram, including transfers, was too troublesome, she stayed home.

Inside the church...

This is what I expected - the spring school holidays just starting, the Australian Football and Rugby League finals are next week, and it's a beautiful, sunny day with crowds pouring through the streets of Melbourne.

Mountains of gold are difficult to reach, but at our fingertips we have the sweets of this world available - the Mountain of Sugar (Zuckerberg).

The overall impression of the concert - definitely positive - I am not a fan of the harpsichord, but in many cases the harpsichord provided effects unavailable to the piano.

Time to return, I'm going to the tram stop, on the way I'm stopped by a demonstration commemorating the death of Mahsa Amini in an Iranian prison...

The last look on the city...

Again, a church brings harmony and a peace of spirit.