GG: tempo

[eric.coates@which.net (eric.coates@which.net)]

Hello all
I've had a wonderfully gouldian fortnight reading the Friedrich 
biography and watching, a number of times, the first two of the CBC TV 
recordings of GG's "interviews" with Bruno Monsaingeon that I taped from 
German satellite broadcasts.(The last is tomorrow at 00.05 CET -Saturday 
to be precise)
These are the finest TV explanations of music I have ever seen, even if 
they were, and fairly obviously so, stage managed by GG. In the first 
programme GG played the 4th Partita that he said was not his favourite 
(but it is certainly mine) and the Chromatic Fantasia that he hates (I 
agree there). 
In the second he starts of with a superb fugue that, to make a point, 
Bruno has to express complete indifference to (very hard to believe) and 
then goes on to give an amazing analysis of the E major Fugue from Book2 
of WTC.
This is what GG and Bruno agree is a real masterpiece and being played 
at a tempo about half that of the official recording I could see why. It 
is quite stunning at this slow tempo yet, although I have listened to 
the official recording many times and thought I knew it well it was 
almost unrecognizable. It may be that my brain's processor (to use a 
computing analogy) is too slow to be able to recognize the subtleties of 
the faster rendition for I am sure the notes were all there and in 
much the same order!
I know that GG preferred to play many pieces much slower as he got older 
but this example must be extreme. I would be interested to know whether
a CD recording of the slower version is available, presumably the 
original TV tapes would yield a reasonable quality CD.
I wonder if anyone else has experienced such a radical change in a GG 
recording whereby the halving of tempo has produced a masterpiece not 
quite out of nothing but out of a piece that had not previously stood 
out above the rest.
Eric Coates