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GG:Just a few thoughts...



Dear GG Forum,

*** This is a wish list game.  What pieces which GG did not play would
have been particularly receptive to his approaches?  Either musically
stunning, or at least highly interesting and thought-provoking? ***

	This is an interesting game--with Mr. Lehman's suggestion of
Schubert's Sonata in A.  GG played some Romantic music when he was still
at the Toronto Conservatory but stopped when he left Guerrio.  I guess he
felt that Schubert and Chopin was just not for him--he never played it
since, and with the exception of Brahm's D-moll concerto and Wagner's Die
Meisteringer, there is no album by GG ever dedicated fully to Romantic
music, like what Mr. Burkholder said.
	BL, when you wrote ' play,' can I include conducting?  GG wanted
to be a conductor before he died, and he did record some interesting
works such as Mendelssohn's Octet in E-flat.  I would suggest Richard
Strauss's Last Four Songs, which may seem like an unusual choice.  I
heard it for the first time when the late Sir George Solti conducted with
soprano Kiril Taikanowa(possible type-o), and I instantly loved it.  It
was completed before Strauss's death, and--this is pure speculation--that
at the very end of the fouth cycle, which is about winter, the last note
rang the words, "Is this death?"  but no answer, and just leaving the
audience hanging there wondering the possible outcome of the song.
	Either just me, or I'm crazy, but this is my opinion.  The lyrics
of this piece plus the mood seems so much like GG last Goldberg
recording--especially the aria, which was played much slower and with an
atmosphere of sadness. The tempo of some of the variations were
exceedingly slower than his 1956 recording.  I also found out that many
lady singers after working with GG praised him a perfect gentleman.  What
do you all think?(:-)
					Elisha J. Tseng
PS Didn't GG hated Fantasia when he was little?