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37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Enigmatic Genius, Understood a Lot Better, April 25, 2004
This review is from: Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Hardcover)
Among the classical musicians of the twentieth century, there was none with as eager a fan base as Glenn Gould. The fans have not diminished in number since Gould's death at age fifty in 1982. Gould was a consummate musician who brought light to neglected but important works, but he was also an oddball who adored the Mary Tyler Moore Show, (...), popped dozens of pills every day to help him over imaginary illnesses, and refused to come out of self-imposed isolation to play a recital for a million-dollar fee. There has been an authorized biography of Gould before, but now _Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould_ (Oxford University Press) by Kevin Bazzana must be the one for all fans to have. Bazzana is the editor of nothing less than GlennGould magazine, and has written a previous book about Gould's musicianship. He brings helpful light on such topics as the influence of Gould's one piano teacher and his love of Canada and his home town Toronto. He is especially helpful in illuminating Gould's early life. Gould's parents were conservative, strict Protestants who stressed propriety as he was growing up in Toronto's Beach district. They had to make sure he did not practice too much (not too little, like most parents of young musicians) and learned that the strictest punishment they ever needed to enforce was locking up the piano. He remained close to them all his life, only moving out of their home when his parents were elderly in 1959. He knew he was going to be a classical pianist from age around five. He loved his neighborhood and the people who knew he was freakish or famous, but treated him as if he were just an unusual guy. He hated performing and touring. Even so, his performances were regarded by many as high points in their lives as listeners. Among the many stories told here is that of his first Russian concert, in Moscow. The auditorium was only a third full, but at intermission, concertgoers hurriedly called their friends to tell them what was going on. There was a small riot for tickets for the second half of the show. It was the recording studio to which he was devoted and to which he retired from his hated performing. His premiere recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations in 1955 brought to attention a piece that had only rarely been performed or recorded before, being thought too difficult and rarefied. The recording was a sensation, and remains one of the bestselling classical discs of all time. (It ought to be; there is no better join of dazzling technique, speedy fingers, and loving intimacy with the music.) He liked working with the technicians who helped record his performances, and had good humor in the sessions, but it was him in front of the microphone, in the isolation he preferred; he wrote, "Isolation is the one sure way to human happiness." Bazzana relishes the multiple enigmas that Gould presents, and this one is surely key: Gould isolated himself right into millions of homes, where it was obvious he communicated something important. Today, worshipful listeners, some of whom were not alive when he was, make pilgrimages to see his home sites, and his rickety old chair which he used whenever he played. He said that the purpose of art is "... the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity." If that is the purpose of art, he would have admired this graceful, readable, big biography that underscores the full complexity of a monumentally enigmatic artist.
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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Idea of Glenn Gould, September 19, 2004
This review is from: Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Hardcover)
With this book, Otto Friedrich's biography of Glenn Gould is finally surpassed. Kevin Bazzana was able to get more people to talk about their memories of Gould, and the result is this very readable biography. The author brings back the impact that Gould's 1955 Goldberg Variations had on the music world. One record executive said that it was as if there had been a big run on a new printing of the Enneads of Plotinus. Throughout, Gould's career and life is told in satisfying detail and insight. He tries hard to explain Gould's musical contrariness, as in his mauling of Mozart's sonatas, but often has to simply yield and accept Gould's contrariness as such (though he intriguingly suggests that Gould may have been a musical forerunner of the postmodernists). And of course there is ample celebration of Gould's genius and his enduring cult.
According to Bazzana, he's a regular Victor Borge in the humor department. But on this score as on so many others, Bazzana must largely concur with the received legend, while offering scattered counter-examples. On balance, Gould was an excruciatingly unfunny humorist, a clotted, unreadable essayist, but also an entertaining raconteur, an unaffected star, and a proud Canadian.
Bazzana's biography of Gould succeeds, but I was left wanting more. For example, there doesn't seem to be any discussion of Gould's mysterious failure to record the crown jewel of Bach's oeuvre, The Art of the Fugue. His organ rendition doesn't count, and may be seen as Gould's way of side-stepping the issue. He could certainly play the fugues: they appear in any number of his concerts, and I especially treasure those that appear in his Russian lecture/concert on a Harmonia Mundi disc I own. Fugue no. 1 sounds like the dawning of some grand insight. Yet Gould never committed the whole thing to record on piano, and disappointingly, Bazzana doesn't offer any insight on why.
There are some very minor errors of fact here and there. For example, Bazzana apparently didn't realize that the Last Letters From Stalingrad, for which Gould wrote vocal sketches, were later proven to be forgeries.
It is very good to have a mini-biography of Gould's teacher, Alberto Guerrero. It's a shame that he made no commercial recordings, so that we could assess his influence on his famous pupil.
Bazzana seeks to explain the oft-rumored Canadian Identity to his readers, as it applies to Gould. Marshal McLuhan and Stephen Leacock are presented as exemplars of the Canadian spirit in communications technology and understated humor, respectively. Like McLuhan, Gould's ideas about communications were ahead of their time. Indeed, even with satellite communications and the technological miracles of the Internet Age, we may doubt that we have caught up with him yet. Oscar Wilde would have been a natural on TV chat shows; maybe Gould would have fit right in sometime in the future, after a few more revolutions in technology. It's as if he was a natural born genius at some field of endeavor that hadn't been invented yet, and so had to settle for realizing his visions by splicing magnetic tape. And playing piano, of course.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Worthy Biography, March 19, 2007
I can't exactly put a nail on why I have read so many biographies on Gould, but I dare say the story of his reclusiveness, isolation and his pursuit of his art has always intrigued me. Up to this point my favorite biography on Gould had been the Otto Fredrick "A Life in Variations", so I had a pre-conceived notion that this book may just have been be a re-telling of all the stories and interviews I heard in the past.
Bazzana appears to set himself apart here in that he was not asked to write a biography on Gould as he described in the book. There are many snippits of things I've allready knew about Gould here, but Bazzana also tries to put another angle on some of the eccentricities most have heard or read about prior. He encapsulates many different views of Gould, so much so that I feel that I have a bit more insite here. Also, Bazzana appears to set some of the record straight for other biographical sources such as Andrew Kazdin's work called "Glenn Gould At Work, Creative Lying" which is another book I gained knowledge from and did enjoy. It may not be entirely possible to have a true biographical account of Gould, but I still appreciate this additional account of his life although I am only giving it 4 stars because I feel there will never be a complete biography of an individual due to different sources and views, but this one is generally well researched. It does re-hash some of the other interview material, sources etc, but within the book there does appear to be an attempt here to rationalize his behaviour and give a better look beyond the stereotype.
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