Re: GG: Royal Cons. & more

[KImmoor@aol.com]

Ooh, I love that letter to the student! It doesn't note in the book where the
student was writing from, but I get a kick out of how Gould (then an aged man
of nearly thirty! - oh the horror...) muses to the correspondent that he,
too, had an idol when he was "a young man like yourself..." God I love Gould.

Anyway, the local free weekly paper in town has started a new column called
"Classical Nirvana," and though it gets off to a small start this week (only
around 200 words,) the first item for discussion is GG's Goldberg Var. The
author says that of all the Bach works for a new classical collector to
consider buying, it is best to start with the GG Golds. He says that they are
the best Bach by the best pianist. I wonder if the author is on this list...
Hey, Maxwell, you there? Also, I saw the first review of Shine to make a
direct reference to 32SF@GG, and now I can die fulfilled. ;-) Lastly, I was
listening to the GG Sibelius disc at the office on Tuesday, and it got me
thinking about the recording technique of multiple perspectives that was
employed for these pieces. (Stegemann's liner notes to this disc and the
comparison he makes to Prokofiev's similar recording process are particularly
pithy.) I would like the opinion of the more ardent audiophiles out there,
just how successful was the recording as a new means of designing audio space
and making "the image of the instrument most appropriate to the music of the
moment." It certainly provides a new depth and lushness to Gould's
performance, in light of his otherwise skeletal performing style, but at the
bottom of it all, is it really anything more than a noisy reverb?