As France’s leading national daily Le Monde commented when this two-guitar version of Bach’s keyboard masterpiece was first heard in 2025, ‘Thibaut Garcia and Antoine Morinière have created a transcription of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations that may well spark the same artistic shockwave unleashed exactly seventy years ago by the revolutionary pianist Glenn Gould (1932–1982)’ – whose 1955 recording caused a sensation in the musical world.

Although still in his early thirties, French-Spanish guitarist Thibaut Garcia is one of the most acclaimed classical guitarists of his or any other generation, praised for playing that combines the highest virtuosity and poetic sensitivity in equal measure. This project takes its origin from a deep artistic friendship with his fellow guitarist Antoine Morinère and offers an entirely fresh take on Bach’s masterpiece, revealing subtleties of structure and counterpoint often obscured by the modern grand piano.

The arrangement, by Garcia and Morinière themselves, is the result of a full year of work during which, in their own words, they focused on ‘how to adapt the keyboard work for two guitars, while preserving the illusion of a single performer’. Twin guitars helped in their artistic endeavour: the performance is on two guitars cut from the same tree, and realized especially for the project by luthier Hugo Cuvillier.

Their recording of the work issued in 2025 by Erato has been greeted by glowing praise. The leading British music review, Gramophone, extolled their ‘absolute commitment to structural clarity on the one hand and [their] nuanced approach to embellishment on the other. Thus the tonal palette is radiant and varied…[and with] a true singing legato’. There have been guitar transcriptions before, but ‘none, however, so convincingly achieves the evocation of an earlier sound world while effortlessly absorbing Bach’s musical language into the classical guitar’s unique expressive idiom’.

Photo credit: Simon Fowler