One may well wonder why (or whether) a non-keyboard version of Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, arguably at the apex of the entire tradition of keyboard music, is at all needed. However, Baroque violinist Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque member Chad Kelly, who "reimagined" the work (arranged is not a strong enough word), offer several justifications for their deployment of the Variations across various kinds of chamber music here. "Despite what many respected and respectful commentators have propagated," Kelly says, "it is not a sacrosanct work of pure, absolute and abstract art." Kelly seeks to use the varied settings to clarify Bach's counterpoint, to examine the musical influences that were in the air when Bach wrote the work, and to "be idiomatic to the historical instruments used in its performance and to the individual styles and genres referenced in the work." All this involves rewriting certain passages. That is a lot to ask, but generally, Kelly and Podger make it work. There are just 18 tracks, with several variations often combined into a little suite. This tends to deemphasize the tripartite structure of the variations, with a canon every third variation. Listeners can make up their own mind about that, but most will be impressed enough by the smooth Baroque winds in the slower variations, especially the crucial Adagio Variation 26, that they will be won over by this unorthodox effort. This release made classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023. ~ James Manheim