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GG: Wagner transcription



Help me to translate the original linernotes of
GG's Wagner Transcription (CBS 32351).
I am now doing the job for Sony Tokyo.
The text is reprented in *GlennGould* Vol2, no.2 (Fall 1996).
It is a format of GG interviewed by Ken Haslam.

Please read the following part:

<GG>: Well, I came to feel that in the Liszt transcriptions,
he was too faithful to the score for his own good.
You know, in an orchestral work, you can put in all sorts of
octave doublings, for example, and according to the diverse 
impulses of the instruments involved, you will have a
rich and glamorous texture.  Do the sae thing on the piano,
even within the options available to ten fingers and,
although you may get marks for authenticity, what you end up
with is mud, glorious mud.  Liszt, of course, is much more
puritanical than I am in a funny sort of way.  He tends to solve
these problems by left hand tremolandos--or even worse, 
right hand tremolandos--which, to me, always sound like the
worst excesses of Aunt Sadie at the parlor upright--
<KH>: --in a moment of rapture!
<GG>: Exactly.
<KH>: But you don't mean to say that you played 
fast and loose with Wagner's textures, Glenn?
GG:  Not "fast and loose," no!  I simply decided that--
well, for instance, that you can't hold a chord indefinitely 
on the piano without allowing for diminishing 
returns--pun intended--and you certainly can't expect 
that chord to build dynamically as, in the strong choir, 
it can be made to do. [. . .]

^^^^^
Now, questions:
Who is "Aunt Sadie"?  
What is the "parlor upright"?
What does "fast and loose" mean?

My non-native speaker's intuition tells me that the
description sounds dirty, doesn't it?

Thank you in advance.

Regards, --Junichi

****************************************
  Junichi Miyazawa, Tokyo 
  walkingtune@bigfoot.com
  (alias for: farnorth@mbc.sphere.ne.jp)
****************************************
  http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/3739