Glenn Gould Revisited

And the whole caboodle comes at only twenty dollars!

I've never been too hot on Gould's Bach, but I might give it another shot.

I had read the Tomassoni piece in the NY Times last night, BTW, and it's interesting to see he now goes for the 81 recording, while most critics used to favor the 'young GG' 55 performance.

Herman

That was a story in Stereophile. Something along the lines that you could hear (if you listen duperclosely) a marching band in the back-back-background.

Still it's funny that 6 months ago no one at the magazine was aware of the plans to put the 81 analogue recording on the market.

Herman

Now if Sony only has the sense to press a run of quality vinyl.

There is also a live version of the Goldberg Variations that Gould recorded early on, I believe in Vienna which is quite good.

Perhaps I'll investigate the new set. I'd rather just get the analog '81 set since I don't really care for the '55 set too much.

And I gotta agree with Ross. Late analog recordings were far superior to early digital recordings. Hell, some more recent digital recordings ain't so hot, either!

According to Amazon, it's not released here yet. Will definitely be getting this next week.

David

I picked up a copy too. I agree about the sound quality. Three discs for $14.99. What a deal. Sony has indeed started to remaster many other Gould recordings. They were on the shelf in Tower NYC but not yet available online. My only gripe is that they are packaged in digipaks. They do at least have original graphics.

I got this yesterday - yes the sound is an improvement on my digital copy. Funny to see how the booklet trips over itself trying to explain why analogue may have sounded better than digital.

Had a listen to the interview disc on the train this morning - not really sure why they bothered to include this.

David

I'll be ordering this title next week from Amazon.

If anyone wants me to pass on a 10% discount on this CD through Amazon's "Share the Love" program just send me your email address. I'll order by Thursday.

All sounds rather shameless to me. If you want the disc just order it anyway...............

Is it singalong-a-glenn? If so, all this effort may have been better served by a karaoke version.

throb

Glenn does all the karaoke himself. Piano playing and vocals for the price of one - all in fine analgue sound. A bargain.

David

By karaoke, I meant a version with the vocals ommitted [but maybe you knew that]. Possibly a blind spot here, but paying to hear a guy [however talented as an interpreter] sing along to Bach will always seem an incredibly irritating waste of money. The bizarre dry acoustic Gould insists on [plus edits] also makes any analogue/digital variations irrelevant in my view. OK, I'll go away.... everyone is entitled to their perversions I'm using smilies to make my point of view a bit more cheery. There doesn't seem to be a 'smiley through gritted teeth' available. Nevertheless, how do people put up with the 'vocalise'? I've never been able to sit through more than ten minutes of Gould without wanting to throw something. I'm genuinely interested as to how people cope with it.

throb

If "texture of the music" is the same as "the music" (I guess not) I'm still trying to find that extra counter tenor stave in the score that says hum ad libitum.

Gould's (and Jarrett's) humming was just part and parcel of the McDonaldizing of Bach, just as Bernstein's hipshaking, jaw-aching Mahler (etc) was just a way to say "love my pelvis / love my music".

IMHO this popularizing approach is ultimately self-defeating. You win some and you lose some this way, in that people aren't listening for Bach, not really being able to appreciate Bach without orgasmic groaning just to know when the music gets hot. So in the end they're just waitng for the big groan

I was looking at the new edition yesterday, and after a while I said no to myself. Gould is just completely silly. I can do my own humming.

Herman

I gotta agree with Ross and disagree with Herman here. I simply cannot accept that vocalising in any way cheapens or "popularizes" music. Gould may be somewhat extreme at times, but that does not detract from the music. Hell, the man moans and groans during Krenek and Berg. I think it would be somewhat difficult to say that those two composers are "popular" or have been "popularized" in any way. And, for my money, Rudolf Serkin's humming can be just as noticeable at times. I can even hear him during the Emperor. I simply cannot accept that the humming in his (multiple) performances of that work constitute a "McDonaldizing" of the music. Indeed, it would hard to argue that many of his recordings are anything other than masterful. Pollini, too, is quite noisy at times. (Check out the Concert sans Orchestre from last year!) Moravec is audible from time to time, as are a number of pianists.

I've always just accepted extraneous noise as part of the experience. (Like when I saw Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg play the Brahms Violin Concerto and she emphatically stomped on the floor during the cadenzas.) Some performers are so involved with the music that they are impelled to hum along, or perhaps engage in other behavior, and they may not even be aware of it, or at least the extent of it. What is most important is whether the right notes are played with conviction.

ersatz wit sign

I guess I got a little carried away by Ross's comment that Gould's humming is to be enjoyed as a "part of the texture of the music." I think that's just nonsense, and reminded me of people who only like their classical when it's presented in this flamboyant way with a dousing of extraneous drama (e.g. Bernstein).

I guess I'm wrong*. I'm a bit of a Midwestern sourpuss in this respect. I have no problem with some extraneous stuff, but I do feel uncomfortable when it becomes a part of the show - it's happened recently with Gergiev's much-commented on butterfly lefthand, and you betcha, I don't go to Gergiev concerts anymore. No one however listens to the elder Serkin for the humming, or goes to a Chung concert hoping a major hairdo redo as I once witnessed during a Berg concert. (never mind the phrasing, Vuk, I was born that way.)

However it's a bad idea (of mine) to judge an artist solely on the kind of audience response he gets (or the way his quirks are fetishized in the press). Gould and Bernstein are excellent musicians, and the fact that people like Ross are only waiting for the groans to come doesn't change that.

So after this bit of voluntary self-criticism I feel a lot better and hopefully I'm still allowed to lurk in the Music Room? Gotta run for the airport now waiting for Ross to make it thru customs and beat me up. (I'll be the guy with the ersatz wit sign!)

Herman

*I also guess I'm just teasing Ross (just so you'll know, Vuk)

On the whole I don't find Gould's humming much of a problem. He's certainly not the only offender - Colin Davis' conducting seems to be increasingly afflicted by humming over the years where you can now hear it from the back of the hall, Rattle now has his moments, and then there was Karajan's climatic croaks.

David

... it's not just the humming, ultimately I almost could, and almost have, learn't to almost ignore that, but not quite. Today I ordered Angela Hewitt's Goldbergs, after being impressed with her Well Tempered Clavier and Tocattas. Heregoes. I don't like the way GG sounds, he sounds to me like some one playing in a hotel lobby showing off his talent. He's worse [even more showy] on the recording of Sonatas for Violin and Viola de Gamba with Laredo and Rose respectively. I don't know, maybe that is the way it was meant to be played, but I've bought alternative recordings any way.

Anyone compare the different versions of the 1981 recording?

i.e. 1981 (Digital recording) Vinyl, CBS CD reissue, SACD and this new analogue master reissue.

I wonder if the latest version sound better than the SACD, I was thinking about getting the SACD before.

By now the massive Glenn Gould Anniversary Edition is in the stores; nice foldout bookies with an original cover portrait up front.

I got the Brahms Intermezzi and Ballades - a bunch of late pieces (Intermezzi) and four very early ones (Ballades).

I used to have the Intermezzi on LP (in fact I still do, but I don't have a tt at the moment), and there's some fabulous performances in this early sixties recording. And some rather potty ones. Nonetheless this set is a good companion to the Radu Lupu cd of the same material.

The Op 10 Ballades is a late recording (1982 I believe), and it's terrible. It's sort of Stoned Brahms. Everything is terribly drawn out, and one of the problems is, there's not that much to draw out yet, contrapunt wise, in early Brahms. I used to have this CD and sold it in the same week I bought it.

Some of those Bach releases will be must-haves for many of you. It's very weird btw there's no recording dates etc in the cover material - in the case of two recording sessions twenty years apart here that's a fairly conspicuous discrepancy.

Herman

I watched a long French or Canadian documentary about Gould this week in which he plays some Schoenberg, Scriabin and Bach, and does a lot of talking.

Unfortunately I can't tell when the docu was shot, but I bet it was late seventies.

It's interesting to see that even though he didn't want to do live performances he clearly is a performer in the sense that his way of handling the interview and the camera is very much a performance. Everything looks and sounds very contrived. His jokes are obviously old and rehearsed many times ("something funny happened on the way to the sixteenth century, er, er, as I tried to say in my bad pun on a broadway musical...").

At some point he says he goes into a recording completely blank: he's perhaps "played through" a piece a couple times at home, but he hasn't really studied it yet - and there he is, playing everything (not just the Bach) by muscle memory, with not a sheet of music in sight. It's a little bit like that obnoxious nerd in school who says going into a exam I haven't really looked at my books, and then he comes out with an A+, because he'd been cramming all night.

Gould's explains that he wants a recording to be more than a substitute for a live performance; he doesn't want to do 'another Emperor Concerto or Appasionata'; he wants to manipulate the music (and Bach would somehow be more suited to that, lord knows why) and make it a special recording. It's an eerie prediction of where we have gotten now in the recording business, where you need to have some gimmick, be extra slow, extra fast, extra big or small or extra cleavage if you want to record a Beethoven.

The solution to this 'problem' is obviously to perform live for interested audiences, and you'll find that you'll play an exciting Emperor every time again.

The docu concluded with a recording session of Scriabin pieces. He wants to have different microphone positions in the concert hall for different moments and moods in the music - again a really weird manipulative idea, that seems to think the music is unable to speak for itself. However, I am wondering whether this Scriabin ever got anywhere, since I like Gould best when he's playing late romantic music. Any Gould afficianados who have these recordings (and wanna bash me over the head for being such a Gould sceptic)?

Herman

(ah, the days of ersatz wit...)

quote:

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[VUK] ... wankery Bobby McFerrin engages in with classical music. Now that boy is sissy

---

This is slightly off-topic but I think this statement is too harsh for a man who can well claim to be a full-blooded musician in spite of all his, sometimes indeed self-congratulatory, gimmicks.

I doubt Bobby McFerrin really tries to become a classical musician like, say, Keith Jarrett or Chick Corea. His experiences as a conductor may have gone too far but he must have realized it in the meantime - apart from that, his duet with Yo-Yo Ma is well worth listening to, be it just for its fun factor.

And, after all, he has certainly done his part in popularizing classical music (again, I suspect many purist bummers to hate ANY popularizer of 'their' music). I have myself been caught by the McFerrin phenomenon once, when I saw him on TV at Montreux singing Bach's over-over-popular Prelude in C from the WTC. I hated the piece, also because I only knew Gould's extremely staccatoed version (actually the only Bach thing I didn't like played by him). McFerrin sang it alone on stage with mind-blowing accuracy, and it's only at that moment that I discovered the harmonic perfection of this - supposedly simple - prelude (BTW McFerrin's recorded version with Yo-Yo Ma is a disappointment, Ma should have left him alone for this particular piece).

The subsequent purchase of the WTC by Sviatoslav Richter helped, but not much. So IMO Bobby deserves at least a mention for this little but oh! magical moment.

Cheese

[This message was edited by Cheese on SUNDAY 05 January 2003 at 20:20.]

Bobby McFerrin sang the first prelude of the WTC at a tv event, 'with mind-blowing accuracy'.

Then you got the Sv Richter account of the WTC, and you didn't like it as much as Mr McFerrin - it wasn't as mind-blowingly accurate?

Sorry, I don't get it, Cheese. Perhaps it helps to explain what accuracy means in your book.

Herman

care to tell us what these opinions were like?

OK, let's go. I indeed pointed out Bobby's accuracy, but it was certainly not the only element making these few minutes magical. Thing is, back then I only knew the singer through his bappa-doo-dweep jazz singing containing loads of blue notes, which was of course stunning - but I would have never ever imagined that he was able to show his virtuosity through plain classical structures. So there was a substantial degree of surprise involved, sure.

Bach happens to be the classical composer I certainly heard most extensively since my teens, therefore I know what I'm after when I listen to a performance. And McFerrin's interpretation (oh yes, it is an interpretation!) just hit the mark. And, I admit it, I actually didn't expect a black jazz-singing youngster to understand Bach, at least the way I did. His sense of timing, the tempo, the subtlety of his voice, the simplicity - and this 'Bach element' that is not easy to describe. The following standing ovation proved that I was not alone in thinking that we most definitely heard J.-S. Bach, not Wendy Carlos.

As I said earlier, I rediscovered the 'harmonic structure' of the piece. I guess this is due to the fact that even McFerrin can't sing any chords, so maybe I would have experienced the same thing if I heard the Prelude on, say, a simple recorder. BTW I'm listening right now to Richter's WTC. Would it be comparable if he let his left hand resting on his thigh? Maybe.

Oh, and all this gets me thinking again about the (often hidden) marvels Bach was able to compose throughout his life. So (after 20 years listening to him) I rediscovered the right hand melody of this 'most simple' Prelude. Maybe I can now start listening to the left hand, and next week, to the interaction of both... It's a long way to the St-Matthew Passion

Cheese

[This message was edited by Cheese on SUNDAY 05 January 2003 at 22:29.]

Oh, and where were you, Ross? I have been living off aeroporto food for weeks, waiting for you to come and beat the crap out of me - or at least attempt to.

I was standing there with my little Ersatz Wit sign - the waitresses started calling me Mr Wit, or worse: "Ersatz, can I get you another drink? I guess your friend ain't coming tonight."

You never showed! I guess you got scared half way.

Herman