1955 Glen Gould re-performed

quote:

Glen Gould's Goldberg variation re-performed

Hmm yes, this is an intriguing development 're-performance'!

Some info here


can we say that Gould actually plays any of the notes on this recording? It is proving to be quite controversial here

I would be very interested to hear this recording.

There was a thread on this when it was first released (see here).

As I said there, I find the whole notion of this disc rather unsettling. What is the point, beyond an academic exercise. To be honest, the sound quality of the original performance is not bad at all. You're loosing the singing of course, but without that, whatever it is, it simply isn't Gould (love it or not). It is also close a recreation this is.

Call me old fashioned, but I want a real person behind my music.


regards, Tam

I agree with Tam; the more recent remasterings of Gould's 1955 performance sound very good and this is superfluous. I think the Art Tatum release, coming next would be very interesting as most of his recordings were very poorly recorded. I could also see this technique being useful to older classical recordings. Who wouldn't like to hear the great classical masters of the 20's and 30's, for instance, in accurrate, modern sound. Whether the technique is applicable to those old 78s I have no idea, but that is where my interest would be.

Oldnslow,

Are you referring to remastering or re-recording?

RS

quote:

Originally posted by Tam:

What is the point, beyond an academic exercise.

The point is that we now have a recording without annoying voice of Glen Gould. I bet there are thounsands of people who wish that someday they can hear his beautiful playing without the interferance of his annoying voice. The day is here now!!

In Poland you can buy 12cd box with the G. Gould recordings of JSB, and including both 1955 and 1981 preformances of variations goldberg (BWV 998). The price is... about 1 pound for all box It was publisheb in 2004 by Columbia and called "Glenn Gould. Joue Bach". I do not know the SACD version of remastered 1955 recording, but orginal sounds very good. Acording to the music, It is very difficult to talk about intrpretation of Glenn Gould. I personaly love his works.

i have this record and sacd 6-channel set-up. it's all for fun, in my view. really an oddity, but great fun, and i feel lucky that there are kookie companies that will do things like program a digital player piano and record in in dsd multi-channel. wish there were more such projects. but is it "serious music?" don't know. do i care what "serious music" is, or whether sacd is a "serious format"? too busy enjoying life .... but the gould disc is quite an odd trip! i suppose on one level the ultimate flattery - will they one day have a les paul that is programmed to do jimmy page licks?? (sorry, jimmy, it'll be after your demise) will that be "serious?"

Dear Nyonyo,

I bet the record compnay does too! Really the Glenn Gould hype machine knows no bounds. He was a great pianist, possibly one of the greatest piano technicians of all time, but his Bach is anachronistic, and his sense of Bach style is really about as wrong as it could be, in light of what we know nowadays was Bach intention and style in performance. A century and a half of musicalogical study have revealed a very great deal about how Bach played, and how he intended his muic to go. It is no longer quite right to say we have no idea how the music went and what the correct style , when we have a remarkably well informed idea nowadays. For a start no piano was involved in any Bach werk.

I listened to the link of the original 1955 recording and the "reperformance" which covers the first playing of the Aria. He plays the graces wrongly, and plays about with the tempo, in a way that is not stylish in music by Bach. There are any number of more stylish performances on the piano than Gould's - not least that of Tatiana Nicholeaeva on Hyperion, which manage to make the piano more or less viable, but till you encounter it on the Harpsichord its full glory will not be discovered. A link below may provide some complling reading in this light:

Bach

ATB from Fredrik

quote:

I bet there are thounsands of people who wish that someday they can hear his beautiful playing without the interferance of his annoying voice

Not me. There are better players than Gould when it comes to accuracy and respect of the score - nevertheless, my shelf is full of Gould CD's and vinyls. I happen to love his playing as well as his persona, and his singing is part of the picture.

quote:

Originally written in the NPR website: Gould himself stopped giving live concert performances early in his career, in part so he could edit together perfect takes in the recording studio

That's an utter lie. Gould advocated and used most of the advanced recording and editing techniques, but never in a million years did he stop his performing career in order to invest more time in studio recordings (he could have done both anyway). Glenn Gould never liked the stage, he appeared there because the guys at CBS wanted him to do so. He never made a secret of the fact that he often felt terrible during concert tours. In the end, his decision to stop touring was a logical one.

btw, i agree w/ fredrik - gould playing bach is gould, not bach ...

Fredrik,

Thanks for the insight on Bach. Currently, I am listening to Perahia's Goldberg var. I like the way Gould played. He is very good in layering the voices. Perahia's is so flat....

RS

quote:

Originally posted by Nyonyo:
The point is that we now have a recording without annoying voice of Glen Gould. I bet there are thounsands of people who wish that someday they can hear his beautiful playing without the interferance of his annoying voice. The day is here now!!

BUT IT ISN'T. Gould without the singing just isn't Gould, it's something else. It's like asking for Gazpacho soup hot. Gould's singing (like other artists) was a part of their musical DNA and if he hadn't sung there'd have been other differences to his playing too.

That's not to say you, or anyone else can't or shouldn't enjoy this music, but don't kid yourself about what you're listening to.


There was an interesting discussion on this over on the Radio 3 boards which raised some interesting points. Not least, since all we have to go on is the recording, it's very difficult to credibly claim to have perfectly reproduced both the exact key presses and, more trickily pedal usage. Not to mention the fact that a pianist will alter their technique to the piano in use, and the Yamaha used for this is not the same as the Steinway Gould played.

They played both side by side on Radio 3 a few weeks back, and it certainly sounded to me like more than Gould's singing had been lost. (For example I don't think the robot's hands were as distinct as Gould's.)


I think the creepy thing about this, is the idea that we can start to pick and choose what we don't like about artists (given what I've said above, I don't think we're at this stage yet). Perhaps we should remove Barbirolli's singing too and Brendel's grunting. Beyond that, perhaps it will be possible to take an artist's reading and perfectly slow it down just that little bit..... As an academic exercise, I can perhaps see the interest, and why people will enjoy the results. But it's become something else in the process. Of course, 'robot plays Bach' probably wouldn't sell so well.


Fredrik, I do agree that Bach should be heard by all on the harpsichord, though I do like it on the piano (though I have a love/hate relationship with Gould). While I do think his readings tell you more about Gould than about Bach, I don't agree with Fidelio, in that it's still very much Bach too.

regards, Tam

p.s. we can agree about Perahia - I find his pianism overly percussive and uninvolving.

Helene Grimaud without her breathing is only half the fun, I dare to say...

Stefan

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
Dear Nyonyo,

I bet the record compnay does too! Really the Glenn Gould hype machine knows no bounds. He was a great pianist, possibly one of the greatest piano technicians of all time, but his Bach is anachronistic, and his sense of Bach style is really about as wrong as it could be, in light of what we know nowadays was Bach intention and style in performance. A century and a half of musicalogical study have revealed a very great deal about how Bach played, and how he intended his muic to go. It is no longer quite right to say we have no idea how the music went and what the correct style , when we have a remarkably well informed idea nowadays. For a start no piano was involved in any Bach werk.

I listened to the link of the original 1955 recording and the "reperformance" which covers the first playing of the Aria. He plays the graces wrongly, and plays about with the tempo, in a way that is not stylish in music by Bach. There are any number of more stylish performances on the piano than Gould's - not least that of Tatiana Nicholeaeva on Hyperion, which manage to make the piano more or less viable, but till you encounter it on the Harpsichord its full glory will not be discovered. A link below may provide some complling reading in this light:

Bach

ATB from Fredrik

Fredrick, You never stop do you,he plays it wrongly,so you know better than him.

Give it a rest

Dear bad boy dan,

I reckon that the rendition of what Bach wrote to be performed on the Harpsichord on the wrong instrument should be challenged at every appearance of it.

Gould's recordings of the Goldberg Variations are beloved by quite a few people, which is very good if it is the starting point for a serious investigation of the music, and an attempt to understand what Bach had in mind when he wrote it.

No one says that you have to agree with such great Bachians as Helmut Walcha or Gustav Leonhardt [to mention two highly contrasted performers of the music and scholars of the subject] on the subject of Bach as played on the piano, but it is important that those encountering Bach's works for harpsichord for the first time realise that Gould's way is not only an anachronism because it is played on the wrong instrument at the very least, but in light of a century and half of serious musicological work, also of dubious quality stylistically in fundamental aspects.

People who enjoy the Gould recordings are fully entitled to express that view, as others are entiteled to express a different view. It would be odd if only one side in the controversy were allowed the privelege of commenting.

There is nothing that I have said in this post that is not a fact, but I will now venture an opinion: Gould is not my favourite artist.

But that is not why I challenge the continuing lauding of his recordings. It is because he used the wrong instrument for bach, and stylist aspects of his playing which can seem veru odd and not related to what is understood of Baroque performing pratice and style. His Beethoven is played on a piano as intended, but he freely admitted that he performed these works to show how ugly they were. I cannot find anything to admire in an artist who aim is that! In Bach Beethoven or any other composer.

Kindest regards from Fredrik

Dear Fredrick,

Why would anyone care if its Piano or Harpsichord,take away the transient of the note and you would not hear the difference.


Best Regards BB

Dear bad boy dan,

Please may I refer you to an earlier Thread. A brief reading of the first post will soon show that your comment about the transients of a harpsichord and of the piano are far less signicant than other factors which define the differing musical and expressive potential of the two significantly dissimilar keyboard instruments. Not the least is the question of controling dynamics.

Harpsichord music by Bach specifically controls the dynamics by a different method, suited to the Haprsichord [you will have to read the link, if not Dolmetsch or Donnington for an explanation of this if you do not understand it], which is different to what is required for either the piano or the pipe organ.

Really I would advise you the read "The Interpretation of the Music of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries" by Arnold Dolmetsch, and more significantly given its greater depth and weight of research being the newer book, "The Interpretation of Early Music" by Robert Donnington. In these books the whole issue of correct keyboards instruments for specific musical pieces is discussed at exhaustive length, while Bach's playing style is phorensically examined from the considerable evidence that exists from contemporary commentaries, not the least of which comes from his own sons. Of course both books are very long, and cover much more than this, but Bach's keyboard and compositional style is one of the great subjects in music, and takes several chapters in both books to cover.

These books will inform you with more authority than what I can of the impossibilty of a piano recreating a harpsichord's clarity and particular expressive suitablility for music written to be played on it by one of the greatest harpsichord and organ players of all time - JS Bach. His fame as a keyboard player was far greater than his reputaion as a composer in his lifetime, and he would be described as the Liszt of his time by greater authorities than me! I think it is fair to say that he knew exactly how to write for the harpsichord and the organ. His style is different for both, and no doubt, had he chosen to write for the piano - and he specifically did not - his style of composition would have been different again when composing for the piano given its different technical and expressive potential. There is proof of the fact that he changed his music rather radically when rescoring it for different instruments, so the old canard that is sometimes put about, that somehow he did not worry what instruments were used to play his music, is comprehensively squashed. I will not cover this in this post, but if you are interested I can let you have specific examples with points of change to observe in the scores, where different versions exist with differing instrumentation. Just ask and I shall oblige. You only will need recordings, and scoring reading will only add to your understanding of what I say without being necessary to get an idea of it at least.

Would you advise playing Beethoven's Emperor Concerto on a big Harpsichord? Really the use of a Piano in Bach, and ignoring the known evidence of baroque style, is no less crazy. That of course does not stop someone enjoying listening to something that is stylistically wrong or being played on an unsuitable and anachronistic instrument.

ATB from Fredrik

Hey, how about we let Gould rest in peace for awhile.

Fredrik

That's a respectable position, which clearly has a great deal of academic support, but it's needlessly restrictive, in my view.

If your point is that the (historically) correct instrument for Bach's keyboard work is the harpsichord, that is clearly beyond dispute. If your point is that Bach's keyboard works should only be enjoyed on the harpsichord - or that it's not really Bach on any other instrument - that's a lot more contentious.

For one thing, it assumes that Bach's intentions, and the historical practices that prevailed in his time, should be the sole arbiter of how we receive his works today. Personally, I see no need to accept this - why not play with alternative instrumentation, if it brings us closer (or even if it takes us further away - since distance can also be a path to greater understanding) from this great music. Why should this not still be "Bach" (though personally I'm not bothered what we call it, as long as it gets me into the music)?

It's interesting that some of your comments about musical replay hint at a version of Platonism, which abstracts from the limitations of the physical replay mechanism, to the "pure" music underneath, but you seem to cleave much more to specific historical practice when the topic is musical performance. Oddly enough, I incline to the opposite view on both questions.

Dear Droo!

Give me a couple of hours to think a nice answer through! I do think the music of Bach can be deeply involving on the piano, and I have about six CDs of Bach played on a modern Piano. I have about three times as many played on the Harpsichord. I am not going to ditch the Piano recordings anytime soon!

What I am sure is that when Piano is used in preference to a Harpsichord this inevitably causes a different reading and performance of the music, and what emerges is a "transformation" of the piece, rather than a very direct link to the sounds and styles that Bach had in mind. Clearly this is not holy sin, but it can distort what Bach meant in the music where the possibilities of the Harpsichord mlead to a performance that is inevitable and natural in a way.

I will explain what I am trying to say better later on, as it is best explained and then illustrated with reference to available recordings of the music.

I am inclined to think I should set a new Thread up, so wait till later and I will kick it off about 23:00 BST [22:00 GMT], as this is getting away from Gould by now, and I don't want to ruin a definately artist related thread with purely philosophical thoughts.

ATB from Fredrik

ATB from Fredrik

OK, I'll look out for that.

I can't resist adding that I'm listening to Shostakovich's "24 Preludes & Fugues" as I type. Ashkenazy on piano - but I wouldn't object to a harpsichord version!

But we're a long way from Gould now!

Fredrik,

In twenty years time it will have moved on again,what happened to just listening to it and going with your emotions.
Your picking apart and intellectualising is enough to put any one off.

Cheers BB

quote:

what happened to just listening to it and going with your emotions

That way lies madness - and sweaty palms!

quote:

I am inclined to think I should set a new Thread up, [...], as [...] I don't want to ruin a definately artist related thread with purely philosophical thoughts.

If you were really such a pure soul, Fredrik, you wouldn't have ruined my LvB/Furty/1943 thread a few months ago with your political/historic/philosophical views, considering that in my last sentence I stated very clearly that I wanted my thread to be about music.

Sorry Fredrik but I jumped on the occasion ;-)

You're neither pure nor holy and no-one of us is, be it here or anywhere else.