[F_minor] Beethoven sonatas (was Gibbons on piano)

[Brad Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

> I was listening to some Beethoven sonatas on my IMAC and I must say that
> Glenn just ripped through some of them at such a ridiculous speed that I
> just sat there, shook my head and said, no Glenn, that's just absurd.
> But, that is why it is called an interpretation.  (And just when I
> thought he had shredded the essence of a fast movement, he totally
> transformed the air with celestial calm in the slower movements; it was
> like your brain waves were completely set into a different and pleasant
> gear....amazing).

Gould's LP of the Pathetique/Moonlight/Appassionata was a "concept" 
experimental album.  It makes sense in its context.  Try it for 
yourself: from the set of most of the Beethoven sonatas, burn yourself a 
CD that has only those three...and copy the essay out of the _Reader_, 
or have it open while listening, as if reading the back of the LP 
jacket.  Gould chose and performed those sonatas for the contrasts he 
could bring to their interpretation.

And in my opinion, Gould's is one of the very few performances (to my 
knowledge) that takes the Moonlight's first movement fast enough and 
flowing enough to sound like the cut-C meter that Beethoven marked in 
it.  It's two to a bar, not four, not twelve.  The soubriquet 
"Moonlight" wasn't by Beethoven, either.  And other things than dreamy 
dawdling can happen in moonlight.  :)

The one Gould performance of Beethoven that I'd say is at "ludicrous 
speed" (thank you, Mel Brooks's "Spaceballs") is the finale of the 
sonata #5 in C minor.  It's so fast that in at least one spot he really 
DID NOT even play the notes.  I slowed down a tape of it once, to check it.

Brad Lehman
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