Customer Reviews

The Glenn Gould Silver Jubilee Album

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I must admit I knew very little about Glenn Gould until I received this CD as a present. I put it into my car's CD player (not the best place to listen to classical music), and for several weeks I didn't change CDs - I just listened to this one! My absolute favourite is C.P.E. Bach's sonata.

Glenn Gould was highly sensitive to criticism. Yet he often was the recipient of it, critiqued for playing Bach on the piano, for playing Mozart too fast, or too slow, or both. In "A Glenn Gould Fantasy," Mr. Gould creates for himself the opportunity to respond to his critics (most played by himself in amusing voices) - who have names like Karlheinz Kloppweiser (an eager German proponent of polyphony) and Theodore Slutz (a mellow New York beatnik). Mr. Gould was also famous for giving up concertizing, a result of his fear of leaving even the tiniest detail to chance. So the fantasy concludes with a mock performance by Gould on a sinking oil tanker in the arctic.

Glenn Gould is usually presented to us as an intensely serious Artist. This is a wonderful reminder of his humanity and silly sense of humor.

Listeners should be warned that the fantasy is chock full of inside jokes and musicological silliness that may be lost on them if they are not familiar with Gould's idiosyncracies, the criticisms of his style, or 20th century musical trends. (For example, if the idea of a "Kodaly Kindergarten" is funny to you, as it is to me, you'll like this. If not, save your money.) In keeping with his personality, Glenn Gould is not concerned here with whether anyone else gets the joke. But if you do get the joke, it's pretty funny. It's also a fascinating window into Mr. Gould as a man and an artist.

The main attraction for me to this album was the Beethoven transcription and the assorted works by Strauss, Scriabin and others, and of course my intense love of the music of Glenn Gould. Gould seems to have fallen out of public favor now, but his music remains just as intense and insightful as ever. The performance of the first movement of Beethoven's sixth is amazing... it is a work that stands up well as a fully realized piece in its own right. Ophelialieder is a wonderful work of melancholy songs, and here the work really shines. This is a wonderful and eccentric work, which describes Gould perfectly.

On the evidence of this disc it's a shame GG didn't record complete albums of Scarlatti and CPE Bach. This would have been a million times preferable to his horrid recordings of music he had not much sympathy for (eg.some of his Beethoven and Mozart):having sad that,the ist movement of the Pastoral Symphony is stunning.Much better infact than Gould's CBC broadcast version of te 1st movement which is too prosaic.

As much as I have always found great pleasure in Glenn Gould's original record of the Bach Italian Concerto, I must admit that his second version was NOT a disappointment to me. Like his later interpretation of the Goldberg Variations, the newer Italian Concerto sounds less mechanical--less computer-like--and more human than the first record. That this 1981 recording seems less brilliant is due primarily, I think, to the very mellow tone of the piano used, rather than to big changes in the pianist's technique. Gould's first piano had a much brighter tone. However, in the higher notes of the piece, the new piano affords the performer a breath-taking legato that is very song-like and much more soulful, so to speak.