Description
The harpsichord from 1745 by Joannes Daniel Dulcken bearing the inventory number SAM 726 not only is an instrument with a beautiful and most distinctive sound: it also commands admiration as a visually magnificent exhibition piece. Nothing is known about the original owners, but over the course of a century and a half it found its way from the production site in Antwerp to Vienna, where it was added to the collection of Historic Musical Instruments at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1921. In the following decades, its playability was restored in several stages, with its sound now documented for the first time on this CD. The internationally acclaimed Austrian organist and harpsichordist Stefan Donner presents the Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach, one of the most famous variation cycles in music history, which is also an ideal choice of program due to the immediate proximity of its publication in 1741 to the time of the instrument's creation.