Here’s a stretch: Imagine a lounge pianist in Leipzig ca. 1760. Late, just before closing, he announces to the few remaining besotted burghers that he wants to play for them a golden oldie by their late choirmaster, in memory of all those wonderful hours of worship J.S.B. had filled with his endless string of chorales and choral preludes.

Caressing the ivories before he starts, he gazes heavenward, a glint of moisture visible in his eyes. Then out of the piano (you also have to imagine he’s somehow got a nine-foot modern Steinway in this Leipzig bar ca. 1760) come the opening strains of the Goldberg Variations. Heavy on the pedal, heavier still on the rubato, he draws the opening aria out to a good four minutes—by which time there’s not a dry eye in the house.

As he launches into a lugubrious, reverential, just slightly polka-esque rendering of the first variations on the theme, many a heavily shod teutonic foot is tapping in time to the infectious music and many a Leipzig heart is swelling with pride at thought of their recently deceased hometown-boy-made-good.

Picking up on the psychic vibes emanating from his beered-up audience, the pianist turns the fourth variation into a bit of almost-martial hubris. The only thing missing is the oom-pah, and you just know his listeners are supplying THAT in their minds.

And so it goes late into the North German night as our pianist for a good 73 minutes cleverly plucks away at the stolid, well-intentioned, all-too-easily-plucked teutonic heartstrings around the room…

Imagine all that, and you’ve pretty well got Murray Perahia’s recent—widely and wildly  praised—recording of the Goldbergs.

It’s no coincidence (and should be no surprise when you think about it) that such an interpretation would come out in the days of Bush II. Just as the country has divided itself into Red States and Blue States, so too the musical world, Goldberg-wise, has now divided itself into Gould and Everybody Else, with Perahia definitely leading the long Everybody-Else column.

And just as Bush II and his people live by expediency, doing Whatever It Takes to Win and Posterity Be Damned, so we now get clever and talented pianists such as Mr. Perahia using every trick in the performer’s book to pander to—and seduce!—the listener.

And damned if he didn’t succeed. Read the reviews on Amazon and you’d swear that Gabriel has forsaken his horn, taken up the piano, and incarnated as Murray Perahia.

You want legato? No prob. You want staccato? No prob, just wait for the next variation. You want heart-wringing glop such as even Liszt never stooped to? No prob, here it comes. You want blinding, crowd-pleasing speed, virtuosity for the sake of virtuosity? Sure nuff, here it is. All that, and much more at no extra charge.

Under Mr. Perahia's lounge-lizard fingers, the work--which just happens to be one of the pinnacles of human creativity-- might more accurately be called the Patchwork Variations.