SSQ welcomes returning guest

Classical musicians find schedule changes unnerving but not unmanageable, and program changes vexing but not impossible.

Pianist Duane Hulbert was scheduled as a Spokane String Quartet guest artist for a concert last April. A schedule change found him playing two months earlier than he had planned, and required him to abandon the idea of playing J.S. Bach’s monumental “Goldberg” Variations.

On Sunday, Hulbert will return as the quartet’s guest. This time the Tacoma-based pianist will perform the variations as his solo set, as well as Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quartet in A major with quartet members Kelly Farris, Tana Bland and Helen Byrne. The “Goldberg” Variations is officially titled Aria with 30 Variations. The nickname came from the harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may or may not have been a student of Bach, for whom Bach may or may not have written the work to play for his insomniac employer, the Russian ambassador to the Saxon court in Dresden.

What is certain is that the variations represent a summary of both Bach’s rigorous compositional ingenuity and his brilliance as a keyboard virtuoso.

After Bach’s death, they were seldom performed until the harpsichordist Wanda Landowka made a landmark recording in 1932. There have since been more than 300 recordings of the “Goldbergs” on harpsichord, piano and in arrangements for string trio, guitar ensemble and jazz combo.

Hulbert, a member of the music faculty at the University of Puget Sound since 1986, grew up in the Midwest and originally hoped for a career singing Broadway musicals. Instead he turned to the piano, attended the Juilliard School in New York for his bachelor’s degree and moved to the Manhattan School of Music for his master’s and doctoral degrees.

He won first prize in the 1980 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition and later took prizes in competitions in England, Spain and New York. Hulbert recently completed recording the piano music of Alexander Glazunov for Bridge Records.