Re: Gould Bias

[Alun Severn <alun@ukiah.demon.co.uk>]

Arin wrote:

>[..] Gould does indeed
>`ruin' a work for us because once you've gone through his passionate
>interpretation everything else seems like it's missing something.

I find this time and time again. I've tried a number of other pianists
playing Bach, for example, but never found one that actually *compares* to
GG or indeed offers a viable alternative that I want to return to. Charles
Rosen's 'bergs are listenable; Schiff, I'm afraid -- though I feel I should
like him for his restraint and diffidence -- sounds pedestrian; no one else
even gets a look in.

I mentioned the JSB violin and harpsichord sonatas recently, after buying
them in the Grumiaux performance on Philips. I thought they were beautiful.
Then a week or so back I also bought the GG/Laredo set. I'm afraid the
Grumiaux set hasn't been out of the case since. Although I had grown
familiar with them through the Grumiaux set, it was the GG set that
*revealed* them to me. And now I know I shall nver want to hear another
version.

I think one of the reasons for this GG bias is that no other performers
come weighted with the same immense cultural associations for me. Every
fresh bit of GG I hear reveals a little more about him and the music he
favoured; every other performer seems "thin" by comparison, insufficiently
resonant. Virginia Woolf referred once to the "lamp in the spine". Mine is
lit when I hear GG, but it barely glows for other performers.....
>
>Oh, by the way, Gerald... I organise my CDs by composer... except for a
>shelf of Sony Gould recordings at the top.

On the somewhat unGouldian topic of arranging CDs: mine are all over the
place, careful little piles -- juxtasupposed in an arcane system known only
to myself and then only some of the time -- indicate who or what are
current obsessions, and who or what has links to this or that....a sort of
mental topography of CDs. It isn't, perhaps, the most, uh, systematic of
arrangements, but it provides some essential reminders to myself about what
I like, and why, and when.

Best to all,  Alun

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"Solitude is the prerequisite for ecstatic experience..."
                                                      - Glenn Gould
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