Re: GG: Ravel's La Valse

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

On Mon, 23 Dec 1996 KImmoor@aol.com wrote:

>    I might be wrong on this one, but looking over the Pincoe catalogue, it
> seems that the only two occurences of La Valse were performances in 1975 in
> The Flight From Order (Music in Our Time) videocassette and again in 1989 on
> a Nuova Era cd released by CBC-TV (which was reissued by Music and Arts
> Programs of America in 1991). No mention of published transcriptions. Also, I
> believe GG samples a bit of La Valse into the Hysteric Return on the Silver
> Jubilee album, which leads me to believe he was never really that serious
> about the transcription in the first place.  As a side note, does anyone
> actually *have* either of the two Ravel cd releases mentioned above? CBC
> Records doesn't offer it in their catalogue.

I have both the Music & Arts CD and the Sony videocassette issue; they're
the same performance.  I think the performance is a lot more enjoyable to
watch on the video than to listen to without seeing him.  This is opposite
to my experience with most of Gould's other work: he has more levels of
interest in his playing (the sound alone) when one *doesn't* watch him
play.  That is, his performance of La Valse seems designed more as an
astonishing showy thing to watch on TV than a pure musical experience to
be listened to. 

For listening to non-televised recorded performances of La Valse, I find
other players' work to be more convincing than Gould's, especially the two
recordings by Leonard Pennario (1950's mono and the later stereo remake)
and the recordings by Louis Lortie and Abbey Simon.  Thibaudet's is also
pretty good.  Gould doesn't capture the gracefulness, flow, and tone
colors of the piece the way these others do.  Again, his version is better
to see than to hear.  It's "look at him play that piano!" rather than
"this is a meaningful piece of music."  I find most of Gould's
performances of other music more convincing, because he transcends the
piano more than he does here. 

For the two-player version of La Valse, there are good recordings by
Lortie/Mercier and Argerich/Rabinovitch. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bradley Lehman, bpl@umich.edu       http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/