|
On >One of my really favourite gouldian pieces is Bach: Fugue in e-major
(878), WTK II >Who could help me to find out the recording-date and
-place of the following recording >which is totally different to the well-known Sony
GG-Edition release of the WTK II... This is a piece GG recorded often, with no fewer than four
different studio versions (two for album release, two for
video) being recorded.? The version to
which you are referring was recorded at the minor fugue (BWV
883), as filler on Gould’s recording of the fifth and sixth Partitas (ML
5186). Given that Gould chose to record and isolate the E-major
fugue as far back as 1957, in only his third recording for CBS, is
testament to the passion Gould felt for this piece.? In fact, in 1979 GG used the E-major fugue as the centerpiece to his Monsaingeon video
collaboration “An Art of Fugue” to illustrate the pinnacle of
Bach’s fugue writing, including an extremely detailed harmonic analysis
(for a film), and delivers a stunning,
spiritual performance that is almost three times slower than his WTC II
recording of 1969!? For those who haven’t seen the video
can read a verbatim transaction of Gould’s analysis in Otto Friedrich’s bio “GG:? A Life and Variations”... Curiously enough, BWV 878 is not wholly Bach, since the
fugue subject was borrowed from JKF Fischer's "Ariadne Musica".? However, Fischer’s subject was, for
Bach, merely the foundation to what Gould called a “magnificent
Baroque edifice”.? And that’s
about the best description I could think of for this fugue. Hope this helps, Dominic |