Re: '55 Goldberg + first listening experience

[Arne Klindt <a.klindt@gmx.net>]

At 08:09 06.08.02 -0400, you wrote:

 

  If a person had never heard how they are "supposed" to be played he/she would think Glenn Gould's recordings were wonderful.  Compared to other people's playing they are certainly different.  I wonder if the people who criticize them so harshly had heard GG first if they would think differently.

 

James

I got to know Wagner's Siegfried Idyll via GG: It made perfect sense to
me.
I was rather embarrassed to find out that the usual redition speed is
about twice as fast. And that's probably what Wagner had in mind, I don't
know the score, but I guess that no one but GG would be so bold as to
deviate from the written tempi. 

Yet to me this is what classical music should be about nowadays: take a
composition and render it according to your own ideas, lifelines,
subjectivity. Can little black specks on crunched and reglued trees
really serve to create an objective recreation of a piece of music? Is
that what the composer wishes for? (see also "The
Glass-Bead-Game" by H. Hesse)
Maybe GG was WAY ahead of his time in taking liberties with the texts he
worked on...

(There's a growing number of "re-mix" websites about, usually
dedicated to one artist: People who like the music go about to
electronically alter it, creating new songs from the originals. Sometimes
the Re-Mixes are even better than the original....though not necessarily
at half speed....)

Arne