These recordings are found automatically, and the machine still gets it wrong. One click from you — yes or no — fixes the catalogue for every musician who opens this page after you. Across our 10,000 works, your answer is our only real quality check.
An arrangement or transcription is fine: if you recognise the work, answer yes. Answer no if it is a different work, a different composer, or if the recording does not play.
-
Play — Goldberg Variations Complete (J.S. Bach BWV 988), with score, Kimiko Ishizaka piano · OpenGoldberg (the player loads on click)
Is this the right work? -
Play — Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Aria · Johann Sebastian Bach, Henrik Måwe (the player loads on click)
Is this the right work?
No account is required and no personal data is collected.
Public-domain sheet music on IMSLP ↗
Official level, taken from the exam syllabus.
Other syllabi : Trinity_London Grade 8 · RCM Grade 10
Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.
Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.
The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.
Does this rating look right to you?
This rating is computed automatically from heterogeneous sources. It gets things wrong, sometimes badly. If you know this work, your answer is worth more than our computation: it tells us which ratings to review.
Each suggestion combines difficulty gap, risk, confidence and skill overlap. The first two cards in each column are the most useful pedagogically.
The safest next step.
A genuine step up, without a jolt.
A useful leap with guided practice.
This set of variations has a crystalline, sometimes playful character, shifting between song-like arias and sprightly dances that call for rhythmic precision and contrapuntal clarity. You will particularly need to manage Polyphony in three or more voices (4.8/5) by clearly articulating and balancing independent lines with precise finger control, and Hand Crossings (4.8/5) which here involve quick register exchanges and careful shaping when the hands overlap. A cornerstone of the Baroque keyboard repertoire, it stands as one of Bach’s major variation cycles built around a single aria. Notable reference recordings include those by Glenn Gould and Wanda Landowska.