Customer Reviews

Partitas 1 2 & 3 - Anniversary Edition

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What more can one say when Glenn Gould plays J. S. Bach? Two masters bringing out each other's finest: Bach is the song and Gould the instrument that vibrates through our souls with messages from the divine. I tell my kids that one of the best ways to get their mental/psychic world in order is to listen to Bach, especially when performed by the Canadian master Gould. (And they're into it.)

These are non-religious, non-verbal sermons on the order of the universe. This is the pinnacle of pure communication that has more to say than all the news media and most of the books written. Okay, maybe that's going a bit over the top . . . but not by much.

I also have other fine pianists' rendItions of the same Bach, Gould's is still unsurpassed. Gould's the one and only approach to Bach, or the other way around, Bach's approach to the mind of Gould is so unique, everything is just fitting the right spot. For the listener, you get the sense, the feeling and the perception of PERFECTION. And that is BACH.

The approach of Mr. Gould around Bach's music has always generated encountered positions. Many people regard him fascinating, irreverent and original, while others critic him his daring positions, his forced canto over the melodic line and literally don't forgive him his refuse to have cancelled his public appearances since 1964.

But what we should notice and always to keep in mind resides in the fact was, whether or not he got to clean the intellectual patina around Bach's music. To be honest, Casals was the first foreigner artist who waited for years and years the accurate moment to play Bach's suites for cello, too according another style and point of view. But what both have in common is to have allowed a very vast portion of human beings to have got to get close them to Bach's music.

That emerging generation of the ashes of the WW2 found in Gould an icon of the art of playing piano; he was for the academic music what Marlon Brando for the new cinema, Orson Welles for Shakespeare or Elvis for a new emerging musical tendency by then, The Rock.

Nobody like him knew to establish a breakthrough respect the formalism that surrounded the classic music, he really was an outlaw, a distant brother of James Dean in what concerns to express himself and furthermore, to convey with rotund success the immense delight and pleasure to listen Bach's Goldberg Variations. This album in 1955 meant a true hitherto, "a before and an after" in the history of the great music.

Maybe if we take a backward glance we should argue that Busoni would have made similar emotive impact in the great masses of listeners.

Glenn Gould (1932) generation was really unsurpassable ; Michelangeli (1920), Kapell (1922) Badura Skoda (1927) preceded him within a short difference of years among all of them among these four distinguished musicians.

So, regardless your previous opinion about Gould's phenomena, we have to admit he incorporated (and still on) a new generation of young people who has been born under his spelling legend.

Over the years, I've heard several different pianists perform
the Bach Partitas after first hearing, and falling in love
with, the Bach Partitas performed by Glenn Gould on LPs.

Since then I had read and heard that Gould was an eccentric
or worse, however famous his recordings of J.S. Bach were.
Indeed, reading Amazon customer reviews of Glenn Gould's
Bach CDs seems to suggest an almost hero worship of Gould
to the exclusion of other pianists who have recorded Bach.

While I still think that Rosalyn Tureck's CD on the VAI
label of the Bach Partitas nos. 1,2,and 6 is superb (see
my review of this CD on Amazon.com), I have gained a lot
of respect recently for Glenn Gould's Bach in general.
He, more than any pianist I've heard, is able to bring out the
inner voices in Bach's counterpoint with the utmost
clarity.

Listen, for example, to his articulation of the Bach Partita
no.2. The way Gould brings out the counterpoint is quite
different from, say, pianists Martha Argerich and Rosalyn
Tureck (on DGG and VAI repsectively), yet he seems to
bring out lines and textures they don't. It is like hearing
Bach anew.

To appreciate fully not only the Bach Partitas themselves,
but also ways this music can be approached, it is essential
to hear various artists.

Other pianists worth hearing in the Bach Partitas are
Angela Hewitt, Richard Goode, Andras Schiff and Piotr
Anderszewski, as well as harpsichordists Trevor Pinnock,
Robert Woolley and Wanda Landowska.

Recommended.

Great joy to listen to, as all others by him playing Bach. Ive listened to this a million times and it is as exciting and illuminating as the first time.

I've cherished Glenn Gould's Bach Partitas since I first found it from my father's old LP collection many years ago. I've listened to it ridiculosly many times in all formats--cassettes, CDs, and MP3s. (I now always carry it in my iPhone.) Gould's fiendishly exuberant playing is of course classic. He is most successful in Partitas 1 and 4. But his overall playing is uneven, and the recording sound itself is uneven, too. His Sinfonia in Partia 2 is ugly. His Praeambulum in Partita 5 is too fast; Toccata in Partita 6 is too slow and ponderous. For modern interpretations of Bach Partitas on piano, those by Craig Sheppard and Sharon Mann are good. (Sharon Mann's playing sounds somehwat Gouldish, even though she was once a student of Rosalyn Tureck.) For partial Partitas, Arrau(1,2,3,5), Argerich(2), Tomsic(1) are very good. For a slow interpretation, there always is Tureck (Philips and VAI).

I have A State of Wonder (desert island music) and Art of the Fugue 1-9. And I see there are many more recordings of Glenn Gould playing Bach. What a wonderful world to look forward to discovering these!