Re: Gould Bias

[Tim Conway <tpconway@ozemail.com.au>]

Greg Romero wrote:

>    I'm suffering from a malady, and I'm wondering if other GG fans
>experience it too.  Once I've heard GG play a work, it's spoiled for me. ...

Yes, I agree, with the exception of Ivo P's op111 arieta and some of 
Andras Schiff's recent stuff. As for the rest -- Arrau in particular but 
also Kempff and many others -- they sound terrible, even to me, a 
non-musician, once I've heard the Gould interpretation. In fact, even if 
I haven't heard the GG interpretation: if I spot a pianist Slowing Down 
Because That's The Way To Play Bach Who's Really A Romantic -- surely a 
capital offence -- I no longer listen to him or her. They're dead meat 
('Hey, cut the Adagio -- use dis new CarneMorto Doloroso'). I used to 
wonder in my teens and twenties why people liked JSB's piano music until 
one day I heard GG. From then on, the rest were just The Rest.

>...same concerto.  I realized I couldn't hear the songs hidden in the left
>hand, which come through so beautifully with Gould.  And in the passages...

Nail on the head, Greg. For me there are two infuriating bits of 
Beethoven: the twiddly 'birdcall' bit in Symphony #6 and the descending 
scale bit in the scherzo (third movement) of Symphony #3, both of which 
(I think) are in 3/4 or 6/8 time. LvB superimposes a temporary and false 
4/4 time (or some other musical subterfuge) to trip up the non-musician 
like me. And the wily old bastard (Aussie term of affection) succeeds 
every time. It drives me mad. I read the score, tap out the time and 
_still_ can't repeat what the orchestra plays.

Enter Glenn Gould and the Liszt transcription of the Pastoral, and 
suddenly all is made clear. GG's left hand delicately chomps out the 
underlying beat while his right hand deftly clears what LvB's orchestral 
score deliberately muddied -- and, I think, you can hear him singing the 
Dead March bit from Sym#7 Mov#2 in the background. If only GG had 
recorded Liszt's transcription of the Eroica.

Of course it goes far deeper than that. When I listen to a GG 
interpretation of just about anything I'm usually confident that I'm 
hearing what no other pianist can give me. Anthony Burgess said of James 
Joyce that he was the only writer to have successfully subsumed his 
character in everything he wrote. Even when you know that Joyce is 
writing autobiographically you cannot be sure that what he writes has 
anything to do with actual events or emotions taken from his life. With 
Gould the exact opposite seems to be true: everything he plays has the 
stamp of Gould on it and faithfully reflects his character and belief.

I don't know about other non-musicians, but for me Gould is enough. I 
don't want any other interpretations of a piece, just GG's. Others would 
confuse and unsettle me. Gould may be wrong on the odd occasion, but he's 
still my country and I'm a patriot. [Tut, tut -- too much emotion. Sign 
off now, you imbecile.]

Best regards,

Tim Conway
<tpconway@ozemail.com.au>