Re: GG and Mozart

[Greg Romero <gregory.romero@yale.edu>]

     Gould disliked Mozart simply because he wasn't able to form a mature
interpretation of Mozart's works for piano.  Instead he resorted to
self-conscious hectoring of Mozart and a refusal to take any but the least
important of Mozart's work for the keyboard seriously.  Gould rarely took
on established pieces, other than Bach's, in the repertoire because he
felt that unless he played them in an obviously tongue-in-cheek or
eccentric manner, he wouldn't be able to compete with other more
main-stream pianists.  Hence, he avoided works of the Romantics, middle
and late Beethoven, and virtually the entire Mozart concerto repertoire. 
Most of the glories of the piano literature come from these three
categories.  This has long disturbed me about Gould.
    Was Gould's emphasis on the dusty corners of the piano literature
really an attempt to transcend the hackneyed, or was it merely a way to
avoid failure?  Why did he really play the Appassionata like that?  Why
did he play the Emperor so slowly?  Did Gould really dislike the Mozart
d-minor?  Was Chopin really a bad composer?  Was Mendelssohn a better
composer than Schumann?  
	Gould was afraid that serious recordings of these literatures
would have paled when compared to the recordings of others, so he
chickened out and played them like a fool intentionally, leaving his
serious interpretations for those works that did not yet have benchmarks.  

    Not my opinions necessarily, but one way, I think of looking at
Gould's professed dislike for Mozart and other composers.  Any response to
these "hypothetical" arguments?  

                        Greg Romero