GG's "Appassionata"

[aq094@lafn.org (Marcelle Selig)]

If you can access a copy of one of the Sony Videos (The Glenn Gould 
Collection, XV, "An Art of the Fugue"), listen to what he says to B. 
Monsaingeon about Beethoven's Middle Period, which includes the Violin 
Concerto and Emperor Concerto. He is outspokenly critical about the 
latter, and rightfully so. When he plays a really "dull" (GG's own words) 
set of modulating chords, you can see that his point is well-taken. The 
"Appassionata" is a work from this period, and Gould's playing of it 
projects his own feelings about B. and the composer's attitudes about 
his "infallibility." GG wants the rest of us to put aside our lofty 
regard and listen to what B. "get's away with" in his Middle Periiod. (GG 
admired the master's First and Last Periods the most.)