Zing go the strings of this harpsichord

For the East Neuk Festival to open tonight with Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a bit like the Edinburgh International Festival opening to a fanfare of the biggest of Mahler’s symphonies, or a concert performance of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. All, in their own way, are examples of epic works that caused their composers exhaustive effort, veritable giants of their genres, and geared to thrill.

Of course, economies of scale come into play. In the dinkiness of the East Neuk, where venues are more makeshift than mega, one man and his harpsichord are all it needs to make an emphatic impression on the landscape. The man charged with doing so tonight, as the popular Fife festival gets under way at Crail’s modest parish church, is harpsichordist and conductor Richard Egarr.

He is slightly apprehensive about the challenge facing him – Bach’s intricate set of variations runs for a mammoth 90 minutes – but that’s not unusual. Several years ago I spoke to pianist Murray Pariah prior to his UK-wide tour of the Goldberg. He confessed that learning it had taken over his life, and had involved having a complete year off anything else to concentrate solely on getting to grips with Bach’s contrapuntal jigsaw.

Egarr is no less respectful of its pitfalls. “It is the ultimate head-f***,” he says with unexpected candour. “It’s a scary piece to play. The challenge is that Bach, in such a complicated score, poses so many questions, but doesn’t give you many clues on how to answer them. You have to figure the whole thing out for yourself.”

You’d hardly think so to listen to the piece made so famous in the 1950s by the Glenn Gould’s revealing but hugely eccentric recording. The simple sweet aria that forms the embryonic theme, and launch pad for 30 skilfully woven variations, is Bach at the height of his genius – where harmony and counterpoint, self-expression and self-discipline, fantasy and intellect, co-exist in perfect equilibrium.

“It’s not something you can ever feel comfortable playing,” Egarr warns. “The first 20-25 minutes are terrifying; you never know what is going to happen. At that point I often think I’d rather be playing the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1,” he adds, referring to Bach’s sequence of preludes and fugues. “They are friendlier pieces to perform.”