Re[2]: GGs of today, GG's Haendel

["Anne-Maree Englund" <aenglund@cochlear.com.au>]

Keith Jarrett seems to have released (recently?) a recoring of the Handel 
suites: has anyone listened to them? While live recordings don't normally bother
me I feel the Richter/Gavrillov recordings suffer from it.

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: GGs of today, GG's Haendel
Author:  Marcos Maffei <mmaffei@mandic.com.br> at INTERNET
Date:    11/6/98 21:04


     
GG's Haendel's suites
I wondered... is there anyone else, besides me, that really enjoys that 
one?
When I bought it, I easily dismissed it in one careless hearing (not 
surprisingly: it was around the same time that I bought the already 
mentioned Art of Fugue and the Bach-C.P.E.-Scarlatti GG's records). Then, 
one day, I picked it just to see what it sounded, after all. To my 
surprise, I enjoyed it enormously, or to put it more to the point: had 
lots of fun with it. Here's my opinion: GG couldn't quite manage to take 
seriously Haendel's Suites (quite understandably: there is some beatiful 
music in them, but, compared to Bach's keyboard contrapuntual and 
emotional depths and altitudes...)
so he approached them ...as child's play. What else can explain his 
rather arbitrary choices and changes of registration, for instance, 
particularly in the set of variations of the Suite in D minor HWV 428? 
Only the fervent ingenuousness of a whiz-kid at play... And, of course, 
he seems to be mightily enjoying himself all along the suites, and all 
this sheer joy is there for us to share... in other words, he has lots 
of fun, and so do we. 
(The letter quoted in the booklet may serve as evidence of my "theory"; 
and, while I'm at it, what is a Wittmayer, this harpsichord "that many 
pro-harpsychordists turn up their noses at"?) 
Well, I guess that all I said makes of this record not much more than a 
trifle, even if a highly enjoyable one, but so what? Unless if you have 
something against just having fun... (oh, you can always go back to much 
more sublime music as in the Byrd-Gibbons-Sweelinck record, another of 
my favorite GG's; and if you want Haendel played seriously, you can try 
Sviatoslav Richter in the very fairly priced EMI doublefforte
series...)