Re: GG: A webchat fantasy

["K. Berry" <kb@cs.umb.edu>]

    The giant floating head of Bruno

Dare I ask ... :-)?

(Kristen, that was hilarious; on a par with Bradley, er, Nelson's
latest hijenks ...)


    Okay you slackers, where was everyone last night?

Hey!  I (and my partner) *drove* to Ottawa (from SE Massachusetts);
about nine hours, so I think I did my part for the cause :-).  BTW, the
Canadian border guard didn't blink an eye when I said ``we're going to
see some rare films'', but the next day, the American one was
incredulous; ``Films?!'' he says.  (Subtext: who on earth is stupid
enough to drive a zillion hours just to see some *movies*; perhaps these
hippie-looking weirdos are really smuggling something, uh, fragrant?)
``Films'', I say.  ``*Rare* films.''  Kathy chimes in: ``VERY rare
films.''  He's still pretty dubious, but some other cars have come up
behind us, or maybe he's about to go off-shift.  ``See you later'', he
says (ominously?) and we zoom off.

Anyway, we got there about 45 minutes before the films started (at
7:30).  We looked at Hunstein's photos (excellent, as expected) and the
memorabilia -- I know I'm supposed to be blase about these things, but I
found it pretty spooky to see a typescript on Strauss, a marked-up
Beethoven score (``less rubato!!'' it says in that scrawl).  Also a
program from Stratford (*7* Cp's from Art of Fugue; argh, why wasn't
*that* recorded) and an early program from the church in Toronto.

I also picked up several flyers for Bazzana's book.  If anyone would
like to order it at the 15% ``special NAC event'' discount, I'll be
happy to send one along (my address below).

I wanted to speak to the chat guests (they were all lined up in a row
behind some Macs, next to a woman apparently doing the sysadmin for the
thing -- ``Are we going to start at 7pm exactly?'' someone [Maloney?]
asks; ``Absolutely'', she says) but truth be told, I was utterly wiped,
and the auditorium doors opened, and Kathy and I went in and sacked out
in the front until the films started.  I was going to ask if any of them
had any stories of Gould playing after hours informally ...

Anyway, come film time, and a fellow walks out on to the stage and says,
well, we had the films specially transferred onto video by Dolby
technicians in San Francisco from Lise Ostwald's copy ... but
unfortunately ... [collective intake of breath] they were damaged in
transit [huge groan] ... but fortunately [breath again] the NLC here in
Ottawa also had copies of the films [yay!]; in fact, they were Gould's
personal copies of the films and we hope that makes up for the lack of
Dolby etc.  (I'm paraphrasing like mad here.)  And off he goes, and the
films start --

-- the same GG we know from the videos, happily talking away
with Bruno about his retirement from concerts (actually, I just hated
giving concerts; the theory about why it was a moral thing to do came
later), why he likes Bach and Gibbons and some 20th century composers
and not so much Chopin and all those other pianistic people.  I can't
say I learned anything new, exactly, but there were some wonderful
moments -- working with Lorne Tulk and ?Kazdin on recording the A major
English Suite.  Gould would play half of the Bourree II, say, and then:

  Gould [still at piano]: How was that?
  producer: Wonderful, Glenn, superb.
  Gould: A bit too [fast,slow,boring,whatever], perhaps?
  producer: Oh yes, Glenn, you're absolutely right [laugh from audience].
  Gould: Let's try it again ...

They must have gone through it about four times, the laugh from the
audience at the producer's yesmanship getting louder every time.

They also showed them placing the microphones in an auditorium
(Eaton's?) for recording Scriabin's Op.1, where GG wanted to have the
close-up (jazz pickup), long shot (microphone in balcony), medium (about
halfway up the seats), etc.  And then Gould listening to the playback
once, then ``Well, don't hold me to this, but I think I have a bit of an
idea about how things should go'' ... and as it plays back again,
telling Lorne to bring up and down each of the four channels (and
occasionally messing with the levels himself), very precisely, singing
along in between directions, and you could just hear the piece coming
into focus and getting much more intense and interesting.

The last film was just GG playing the e minor partita, the one with that
incredible (sorry, opinion creeping in) gigue.  Bruno had the thing shot
so that it appeared Glenn and the piano were floating in white space.
It was something.  There's a moment towards end of the first movement
(the toccata) where after this incredibly long fugal/canonic statement,
the voices finally catch up with each other and Bruno cuts back to his
hands and they're playing in unison.  So beautiful ...

(After that they showed the Art of Fugue and Goldberg Variations videos,
but our bodies had given out, and we'd already seen them, so we left,
hard as it was to leave them behind, talking about the first B-A-C-H
fugue Bach wrote as a young man ... we couldn't go to the concert last
night either, sigh.)

Well, sorry this is so long.  I see Arin just sent a precis of the book
launch (we were just crossing the border about then ...) while I was
writing the above, but I guess most of my junk is about the films, and
anyway I don't want to delete it, so here it is anyway :-).  (And
congrats on the thesis advisor finding, Arin!)

K