Customer Reviews

Handel: Harpsichord Sonatas Nos. 1-4; Bach: Preludes & Fugues, BWV 878 & 883

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Well, you will never have heard a harpsichord like this! Glenn Gould was no harpsichordist (although, in my opinion an incomparable pianist) and the Wittmeyer instrument he chose to use sounds most peculiar in places.

Gould chose to make this recording on a harpsichord following serious accidental damage caused to his beloved Steinway piano CD318, which rendered it unfit for use for quite some time. This resulting recording is interesting, if hardly ranking among his greatest performances! But it does have a sense of fun that is infectious...this is Gould saying "This is me having fun, but don't take it too seriously." Listen to track 4; the Gigue from Suite No 1 in A major. It may sound fanciful , but if anyone could ever be said to be making a harpsichord laugh, that is what Gould is doing here, although to me the tempo of this movement is somewhat uneven. Unfortunately Track 1, the Prelude to this particular suite, is rather weak, and certainly lacks the clarity and decisiveness usually associated with Gould's playing. On initally hearing this opening track I thought that for the first time I had bought a Gould recording that would be disappointing, but I was wrong. I stuck with it and found the remainder of the CD much more rewarding, although as I said above, it remains for me a curiosity more than a classic example of Glenn Gould at his sublime best.

There is only one other recording (as far as I know) that gives us a glimpse of Glenn Gould playing an instrument other than the piano, and that is his recording of extracts from Bach's Art of Fugue, the first nine tracks of which he recorded on the organ. And that is altogether a more serious effort than this strange harpsichord offering.

Incidently you can also watch on video Gould at the harpsichord playing tracks 25 and 26 of this CD ( Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E major from Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier) on Sony's Glenn Gould Collection IV - "So You Want To Write A Fugue?". Watching him at this unfamiliar instrument is quite a contrast, following as it does a rendition of Bach's G minor Concerto on the grand piano with the Toronto Symphony!

This is probably a CD for devoted Gould addicts only, or at least for those who are reasonably familiar with his piano recordings. . It's enjoyable, but you won't want to listen to it as often as his other work.

Gould's Haendel harpsichord interpetations took a beating from the critics when first released, but I must say that it is the most interesting record I have of these works, and I have 7. Fantastic timing and pleasant, although unorthodox, phrazing makes this record a joy to have and to compare with other great performers such as Leonhardt's rendition of the same works. Many of your friends won't believe it is the same tunes. A small minus for the sound on the harpsichord though. Recommended, for its pure artistic value as well as for fun!

Where Gould is concerned we always need to expect the unexpected. Damage to his Steinway grand piano thwarted his plan to record the Handel keyboard suites using that: the critical reception given to his plan B, namely to record them on the harpsichord instead, brought that scheme to a halt after he had done just the first 4 out of the total number of 15 or 16. Here they are anyway, together with two preludes and fugues from the second book of Bach's 48, on a Wittmayer instrument, the one harpsichord Gould was comfortable with.

The legend of Gould's eccentricity has lost nothing in the telling. I find little or no eccentricity in most of his playing, but he can always spring surprises and he chooses to do just that on the very first track of this disc. His playing of the prelude to Handel's first suite is downright peculiar. Gould applies a heavy rubato, and between that and the way he spreads the chords the melodic line becomes extremely hard to follow. Afterwards everything is really comparatively plain sailing, at any rate for me. I suppose not everyone is going to like his choice of tempi at times, nor his slightly erratic approach to the question of playing repeats. In particular the Air from the set of variations in the third Handel suite is made to take nearly as long as the following five variations combined, but I still have no real problem. It has an air of spontaneous mood-of-the-moment creation for me, and I even suspect that the legendary improviser Handel might have been rather pleased at hearing such whimsical imagination brought to bear on music he had written mainly for the purposes of teaching. Imagination was probably the last thing he would have expected from many of his pupils.

Gould's registration is a bit of a curate's egg to me. Some of it seems very effective indeed, but he has a predilection for one rather throttled-sounding register that I wish he had used a bit less. Otherwise Gould is still Gould - one of the greatest technicians of the keyboard there can ever have been - and you will find here as you will find in nearly everything he did that uncanny evenness of touch, crispness of ornamentation and his distinctive `bite' in the rhythm.

Those who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like, I suppose. As it happens, I do not own a version of the Handel suites. I am an enormous admirer of Handel and an enormous admirer of Gould, so I am more than pleased to have acquired this particular subset of them. I would recommend sampling the disc before buying, because it is going to be a matter of individual taste even more than is usually the case. Alternatively, just take the plunge and get yourself a disc whose faults at least do not include predictability. Better sorry than safe, I say.

This is a fascinating set of recordings by Gould. For me, the Handel harpsichord sonotas make this special. The compositions themselves seem nearly contemporary in style, and far more melodious and creative than the other Bach organ works on the CD, which are staid and stuffy in comparison. You can even hear Gould humming along in his characteristically eccentric way.

I see a lot of people trying to sound erudite and particular about every aspect of the recording.

I couldn't care less: why should it have to sound like a harpsichord? The music is aesthetically pleasing to me, and that's the whole point.

p.s. the gigues are so good.

Unlike some of the other reviewers for this CD, I'm not a harpsichord aficionado. I don't spend my life playing the harpsichord or listening for the subtleties of others' playing, although obviously some here do. I can't speak to Gould's technique; all I can tell you is my impression of Handel's pieces as a whole, which I found to have great dramatic flair. Every movement conveyed so much emotion and power that I constantly found myself disappointed to have finished the CD so quickly. To the extent that I gained such an experience I give Glenn Gould credit for bringing out the pieces' power in his playing.

I have never been a fan of Glenn Gould. His performances of Bach's music on the piano probably seemed like a revelation when he first burst on the scene in the early 1950s. At that time, Bach's keyboard music was routinely played on the piano in a very Romantic way. Since a piano has a much rounder sound than a harpsichord--less of a percussive attack--it is difficult for a piano to articulate counterpoint as cleanly as a harpsichord can. Gould's solution was to play almost everything in an unrelieved semi-staccato, a trademark of his playing throughout his career. It made the contrapuntal lines stand out better, but at the expense of any sense of legato. After a very short while, it becomes extremely tiring.

For this album, however, Gould actually performed on a harpsichord as a sheer expedience--his piano was damaged and the recording sessions were already scheduled, so he pressed into service (in his own words) the "one harpsichord in the world that I can play, and that's one that many pro-harpsichordists turn up their noses at--the Wittmayer." He is right there--Wittmayers fall into the category of "German factory instruments," which today you would have trouble giving away. Whether the one he uses is a particularly weird instrument or it just sounds that way because of the way he plays it, is difficult to ascertain.

(A note here to everyone--and there are many--who comment in their reviews that they prefer Baroque music on the piano because they don't like the sound of harpsichords: you should reserve judgment until experiencing a variety of harpsichords in person. Harpsichords are probably the most problematic of all instruments to record; mike them too close, and you get an explosion of percussive attacks and releases; mike them too distant, and they sound far weaker and "tinkly" than harpsichords actually are. And the excessive reverberation present on many recordings turns the instrument's sound into a jangling blur. I adore harpsichords, but there are many, many recordings that make me want to run from the room screaming.)

Like many pianists who think they can play a harpsichord without proper training, Gould certainly lacks a proper harpsichord touch--one can hear the jacks thumping against the jackrail from his excessively heavy touch--and his notions of registration are strange, to say the least. He betrays his almost total ignorance of harpsichords when he claims his Wittmayer "lacks certain amenities such as a lute on the four-foot, which I would dearly like to have and which any self-respecting harpsichord offers." Really? I have studied and played harpsichords for 40 years--from modern "revival" instruments by Challis and Rutkowski to "authentic" instruments by Hubbard and Dowd--and have never, either in person or even via written description, encountered one with a "lute on the four-foot." (The "four-foot" refers to a separate set of strings that play one octave higher than written.) By "lute" he presumably means what is also called a buff stop, whereby a wooden rail slides to press small felt pads against the strings, giving them a dead, pizzicato sound. It appears commonly on 8-foot registers and is included on most modern harpsichords not because it was a common feature of old instruments--it was not--but because it is a mechanically simple and inexpensive way of adding another "sound" to the harpsichord's palette without having to add another set of strings or jacks. It is an effect that should be used extremely sparingly.

On these recordings, Gould, still trying to make Baroque musical lines sound as detached and mechanical as possible, over-uses the buff stop to a remarkable extent (the opening movement of the second suite is a good example). Elsewhere, he often combines a buffed 8-foot register with the unbuffed 4-foot register; presumably he would have preferred to have both registers buffed to make the sound even more percussive. A harpsichord already has a very distinctive "attack" for each note; couple that with detached playing and overuse of the buff stop, and you lose virtually all sense of line. Occasionally Gould plays a movement without gimmicky registration and with a nearly legato line, but those moments are few and far apart.

His tempos are what you would expect from him--often far too fast, so that the music sounds merely hectic and frenzied rather than lively. At least his trademark mannerism of singing (or groaning) as he plays seems relatively absent. Some of his fans see that practice as endearing, proof of Gould's inspiration and involvement with the music; I see it as an appalling lack of discipline that no sane music teacher would tolerate in a student. If you are curious to hear what Glenn Gould would sound like on a harpsichord, this recording will answer your questions. If you are a fan of Handel's harpsichord suites, or of the instrument itself, you can safely pass on this exercise in the bizarre.

(A final note: I don't know where Amazon got the notion that these are "sonatas" by Handel; the album clearly and correctly identifies them as suites.)

Ummm.....This cd is ok, but Glen's harpsichord technique is terrible. I think he should have had lessons before he played the instrument. I can't doubt that he is a marvelous pianist though.