The Glenn Gould Edition: Ludwig Van Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Volume II (Nos. 15-18, No. 23, Nos. 30-32)

Ludwig van Beethoven (Composer), Glenn Gould (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Glenn Gould
• Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
• Audio CD (April 19, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 3
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0000028NY
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #134,734 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gould loves Beethoven, May 15, 2008

By 

David Gillett "cd-maven" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Glenn Gould Edition: Ludwig Van Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Volume II (Nos. 15-18, No. 23, Nos. 30-32) (Audio CD)

I just returned this CD set to the library; it was like saying goodbye to a dear friend. Other reviewers comment on Gould's irreverence. He isn't irreverent to Beethoven, but to the accumulated weight of two centuries of performance tradition. His approach is direct: just play the notes and let them guide you to an interpretation. Listening to other pianists play the same material is painful "Why slow down here? Why that sudden dynamic change?" Their "interpretations" seem fussy and intrusive.

The first movement of the Appassionata is the most obvious. I laughed through it the first time. All the drama is removed: a slap in the face to traditional interpretation. As I listened again and again, the somber magnificence of Beethoven's genius emerged. Gould explores every note and lets it speak. He never short-changes a passage to achieve an effect.

In his late sonatas, Beethoven became more contrapuntal. Gould shines in these movements, allowing the great fugues to build from their own internal strength, revealing the architecture.

I imagine Beethoven listening (if he somehow could) to these performances and saying (in German), "Of course! How else would you play it?"

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ho humm, May 18, 2011

By 

FalseRelations - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Glenn Gould Edition: Ludwig Van Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Volume II (Nos. 15-18, No. 23, Nos. 30-32) (Audio CD)

These are not at all rhythmically accurate performances. The rhythmic structure of the Arietta of Opus 111 is formed from ever decreasing diminutions of a basic triple time metre: 9/16 at the opening. You'd never know this from Gould's performances. If only he "just played the notes" because, like most pianists, he certainly doesn't get the rhythmic structure of this piece right at all. It's a chaconne, basically, and if the rhythms are not kept fairly strict then the music risks falling apart. He arpeggiates chords all over the place. The famous 2+1 rhythm of the so-called "boogie-woogie" passage is smoothed out, sounding like streams of identical notes. Listen to the young Eschenbach, the young Brendel or Pollini or, on DVD Michael Houstoun in particular to hear how this passage is meant to go. This is not "interpretation", it's deliberate and perverse negation of Beethoven's complex but completely clear notation of the rhythmic and metrical structure of the piece: Beethoven spent a lot of time getting the notation of this movement right in order to convey the subdivision of the triple-time metre into progressively smaller subdivisions and the only tempo indications after the first page are "L'istesso tempo" (ie. keep the same tempo which is what almost no one does). Gould then speeds up the triplet 32nd notes of the twinkling "star-music" of the Arietta so much so that the fact that they are variations on the opening bars simply cannot be perceived and making the passage sound like Liszt at his flashiest: I urge caution, they are "interesting" but they are not performances of Beethoven. With this kind of rhythmically and formally incoherent "interpretation" Gould might as well have played the sonata 3 octaves lower or backwards.
Does anyone besides me care much about the fact that a composer like Beethoven took great pains to notate exactly what his ideas were and yet most pianists play what are at most approximations of those ideas?

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gould swings between arbitrary and inspired, November 22, 2008

By 

Santa Fe Listener (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Glenn Gould Edition: Ludwig Van Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Volume II (Nos. 15-18, No. 23, Nos. 30-32) (Audio CD)

Although the first word that comes to mind with Glenn Gould's name is Bach, he didn't bring baroque sensibilities to romatnic composers. His Beethoven obeys no authority but his own, and as a result Gould's readings are often high-wire acts. The trudging first movement of the Appassionata is a fall from grace, and you have to avert your ears. But he brings fresh vitality in many other places. I like the unpredictable originality in Gould's Op. 109, 110, and 111 -- it takes a free-wheeling mind to recreate Beethoven's free-wheeling invention.

Yet Gould is also enjoyably vivacious in "easy" sonatas like the Pastorale and the Op. 31 group, where he's never outrageous and is often perfeclty balanced. Even when a movement runs off track, you sense the pianist's excitement and good humor; he's not simply being a bad boy. The apoplectic one-star ranters should have started there instead of with the Appassionata (or maybe they groove on outrage). I don't think Gould plays for insight, however -- he just insists on responding the way he responds, like Beethoven himself. Mikhail Pletnev is Gould's spiritual descendant, although the Russian is quirkier still, since he often changes tempo several times in a few bars and jumps around on the griddle with more sizzle.

In any event, there's a way to hear these recordings as "genuine" Beethoven, not simply a barrel of monkeys. If I want to go ballistic, it's Gould's Mozart that I would pick, not his surprisingly sympathetic Beethoven.

P.S. -- Columbia didn't always give Gould the best sonics, but almost every sonata here is in realistic, easy-to-listen-to sound.