Re: Has GG's star faded in the midst of recent trends?

[jerry and judy <jerbidoc@zianet.com>]

 Simon Roberts wrote:

> > jerry and judy (jerbidoc@zianet.com) wrote:
> > : The sad question occurred to me when I read this post. (below)

> > : Is the GG 'legacy', and all that that phrase conjures up, the polar
> > : opposite of HIP?  I enjoy and appreciate both, but am I in the minority?
> > : and is it a generational reaction?  Shouldn't the Gould recordings be
> > : required listening for today's serious student?  Here's hoping...

> > I don't know what you mean by "polar opposite" of HIP; but assuming it is,
> > there's no contradiction involved in liking both unless -- which certainly
> > isn't true for me; I'm a big fan of both -- one defines liking one in part
> > in terms of not liking everything else (including the other).  But there's
> > no need to do that.

> > Simon

 There was an interesting piece by Richard Taruskin in Opus -- if I were
 better organized, I might find it -- which did a comparative review of
 Argerich/Maisky in Bach's gamba sonatas with some HIP performance and
 the Gould/Leonard Rose recording, basically situating them along a
 continuum with Maisky/Argerich as conservative/romantics, the HIP
 performers as modernists, and Gould/Rose as post-modernists.

 The distinction, in Taruskin's thinking (and I hope I'm not
 misremembering the argument) was that Argerich and Maisky were playing
 within the tradition they were raised in, the HIP performers (whose
 names I simply don't recall) were rejecting that tradition and making
 Bach into a modernist (recalling Taruskin's argument that one of the
 essential elements in HIP was to make a Bach who sounded like a 20th
 century composer rather than like a nineteenth century composer -- out
 of Brahms and into Stravinsky), whereas Gould and Rose were essentially
 rejecting tradition and trying to find their own way through the score.

 There is no Gould legacy -- the performer who follows Gould's path will
 sound nothing like Gould, because the essence of Gould is an
 interpretation that may suit none but the performer.

 John   jgh@netcom.ca