GG: and Dmitry Paperno

[Karl Berry <karl@cs.umb.edu>]

I just read Dmitry Paperno's book Notes of a Moscow Pianist.  I found it
very interesting.  It's mostly about Paperno's life in Moscow as a
student, performer, and teacher.  It is remarkable for the description
of the cyclical Soviet oppression and thaws, kindnesses and horrors,
that permeated life there.

Anyway, he mentions Gould in only one short paragraph towards the end of
the book, along with Rubinstein and Leonid Kogan who also died in 1982:

    ... at age fifty, the ``insane genius'' Glenn Gould had gone.  Those
    in Moscow and Leningrad lucky enough to have heard Bach's Goldberg
    Variations from this young Canadian in 1957 will never forget the
    impression.  The magic of a kind of shortened tone, and a
    corresponding, less connected articulation was something much more
    than a materful stylization of the old clavier music.  It seemed as
    if Bach himself spoke to you as your living contemporary---in
    person, wisely, trustingly.  In his interpretations of other
    composers (Beethoven, Brahms) and in his general views of music
    performance, Gould was paradoxical, sometimes unacceptable, but
    always deeply principled, which he proved with all his creative work.

I can't tell from this whether he was there for GG's performances in
Russia or not.  He was at the Moscow Conservatory at the time, so it
seems likely, but ... No mention of Gould as the first Western musician
to be invited to Soviet Russia, no longer discussion of his work.  (By
contrast, he goes into detail about Van Cliburn's visit the following year.)

Anyway.  It was a fun and not-too-long book :-).