Re: g minor sinfonia bwv797

[Juozas Rimas <JuozasRimas@TAKAS.LT>]

> The CBC broadcast and the live versions are around the same tempo, but the
> 1964 CBS recording is much slower than the other two, and significantly
> slower than the other three versions of it I have as recorded by other
> performers.

Thanks. I'll go for this 1964 recording - that is, for the slow one. Currently I
have borrowed it on a cassette but will try to buy the CD.

The slow interpretation of the sinfonias reveals so many "hidden" treasures...
The 5th and 11th sinfonias (sorry for the numeric values, I'm not a musician,
just a listener, and find it hard to remember musical pieces by tonations),
especially prosper from the explicitly slow tempo, in my opinion. Nr. 2 and Nr.4
are of "normal", adequate tempo but slow for Gould.

Anyway, I enjoy all the 15 sinfonias from this slow-mo recording, except for one
moment in the 15th sinfonia, just before the end (at about the 0:50 mark), where
he plays softly before the pause. The whole sinfonia played with such demonic
energy (could be even more, like in his fast recordings of the sinfonias!) and
then for a short moment he resembles a car getting a flat tire. It's a small
detail, I know. There are also some inappropriate singing - not so bad as eg in
the 14th Goldberg Variation (1982 recording), of course.

I can also hear more extraneous sounds - something like a creaking chair and a
ballpoint pen hitting the piano surface from time to time. I believe the
cassette sound quality is to blame here but could someone having the CD confirm
that there are no such non-human sounds there?

Juozas Rimas Jr
Webmaster of http://mp3.com/JuozasRimas
(the classical site)