The 19th-century reclamation of Bach’s music, spearhead by Mendelssohn and then Schumann, was later to be further developed most famously by Ferruccio Busoni. However, another key figure was composer and organist Joseph Rheinberger, whose arrangement for two pianos of the Goldberg Variations was made in the spring of 1883. Noting that the work had been ‘the object more of theoretical appreciation than musical performance’ Rheinberger sought to clarify its imitative polyphony and where he felt it necessary, added new parts of his own writing to the original score, to create a viable Bach-Rheinberger composition.
