Re: Gould/Chopin

[Anne Smith <smithqa@nexicom.net>]

This is from an interview on CBC Radio with Vincent Tovell.

Tovell:  You don't find yourself wanting to play Chopin, for instance?

GG:    No. No, I don't.  I play it in a weak moment - maybe once a year or
twice a year for myself.  But it doesn't convince. me.

GG went on to admit that Chopin certainly understood the piano.  He said he
was an unparalleled setter of moods and as a miniaturist he was superb.  He
felt Chopin failed "in the bigger things of music, in the real
organizational attempts, he failed almost altogether."

Remember, GG thought of himself as a musician not a pianist.  The fact that
Chopin was the pianist's composer did not impress Glenn Gould.
Like the rest of us, GG had to learn Chopin when he was a student.  From
what I have read, it sounds as though he had his fill of it then.  He
mentioned playing Romantic music for student recitals.

Anne
----- Original Message -----
From: f h <boyboy_8@YAHOO.COM>
To: <F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU>
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 12:52 PM
Subject: Gould/Chopin


> I have long felt curious about his almost Chopin-less
> output.  I am really only going to guess here, having
> not read what Gould said in print or interviews about
> his opinion.  I have a somewhat love/disinterest in
> Chopin and always have.  As a romantic poet of the
> piano, Chopin has expressed musical ideas which, at
> the best, are superb.  At his worst, he sounds like a
> broken record.  It's not so much that you can hear
> those chords coming like the proverbial train around
> the mountain, or you can see Chopin bringing his
> pieces to a conclusion as if he was strapped with
> crazy glue into the composers seat, fixed and fixated
> with the forms he had either created or developed.  I
> think that Chopin suffers worse than say, Schubert,
> for a composer who had an opportunity to express
> himself from a wider pallet and lost track of this
> ambition and instead found himself almost sounding
> like a caraciture of himself.  I know that this is a
> bit harsh, but after a few hours of listening to many
> Chopin pieces in a row, you will get a gist of what
> I'm getting at.  Where other composers, especially
> Beethoven, searched for ever new forms and
> complexities to elaborate on, Chopin was quite happy
> showing you how many different ways that a heart could
> be worn on one's sleeve.  Fine enough but there is
> much more to be said in music.  He abandoned symphonic
> and chamber music expressions where he most certainly
> had the musical mind to explore these and other forms.
>  All in all, perhaps, Gould felt a bit let down or
> even bored with Chopin, because from an intellectual
> point of view, or better put, from a contrapuntalists
> point of view, Gould might have felt that there was
> very little there in Chopin that needed exploring.  As
> I say, it's just speculation on my part.
>
> Regards,
>
> Fred
>
>
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