Re: gg, bernstein, and interpretation....

["Daniel Vaiser" <vaiser@airmail.net>]

Hello fellow f-minors:

Considering the legend that has grown around  the Gould/Bernstein/N.Y.
Philhamonic  performance of the Brahms No. 1 Piano concerto (and given my
own intense curiosity), I decided to shell out my money and bought a copy of
it. By the way, in response to the message I am responding to, the Brahms
Piano Concerto is  its own album; it isn't part of the newly re-released
"Silver Jubilee" album -- which has a version of Bach's "Italian concerto"
that Gould (I think) recorded towards the end of his life. Basically, the
contents of the "silver jubilee" album are the same as when it was first
released, except for the new version of the aforementioned Bach piece and
along with the "Glenn Gould Fantasy" there is another added comic routine
(that he did on CBC radio with announcer Margaret Pascu) ostensibly about a
flute fesitval at "Maud Harbour", with Gould doing the voices of Theodore
Slutz and Sir Nigel Twitt-Thornwaite in that "Maud Harbour" episode.  Sorry
for this longish intro, but I wanted to say was that after hearing the
Brahms Piano concerto in the Gould/Bernstein version, I really felt "what is
all the fuss about?". I guess I expected something WAY WAY OUT of the
ordinary and to me, it just seemed like a performance a little on the slow
side, but nothing to overreact about.  Have any other people on this list
heard this performance?  what do you all think about it?  Be well.


Daniel Vaiser

-----Original Message-----
From: T.R. Thiessen <punch@sk.sympatico.ca>
To: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu <f_minor@email.rutgers.edu>
Date: Tuesday, October 06, 1998 11:33 PM
Subject: gg, bernstein, and interpretation....


>First of all, my apologies to the list, for my words last night
>regarding morons etc.  I was a little too quick on the reply key, ah?
>
>Second of all, I understand that the silver jubilee album contains the
>brahms concerto played with the nyphilharmonic, the infamous concert
>where bernstein addressed the audience ahead of time regarding
>interpretive differences, etc.
>
>I was fortunate enough to have taped the recording on gg's last
>birthday, and the cbc host that day happened to be the one who
>interviewed gould in 1963 regarding this incident, and to which gould
>gave some insight....(I was, oddly enough, listening to the tape on the
>way home from work, and thought about sending it in to f-minor, so here
>goes): as an intermission guest on a ny philharmonic radio program...
>
>    IN addressing the way in which two collaborators, both of
>outstanding calibre, can approach a symphonic work, & have such diverse
>conception of the piece.....
>
>"I don't know that there's a satisfactory explanation, as far as what
>transpired last year, I seemed to be the only person around who felt
>that Mr. Bernstein's speech was full of the best of good spirits, and
>great charm, and I in fact sat backstage giggling before we played the
>thing in fact I could hardly get started.
>    But there is no solution to this sense of collaboration that's
>demanded of a concerto - part of the concerto idea is of course the
>sense of non-collaboration, the sense of willingness of the virtuoso -
>so called - to 'show off.'  And I think it's this, it's the traditions
>that emanate out of that that prompted me to do what I did because what
>went on last year was in no way a particularly new way of performing
>that particular Brahms concerto except for one thing, and that was our
>proportions of tempi and our proportions of dynamics tended to be scaled
>closer together than is usually the case.  There was less - if I say
>exaggeration, I don't mean it critically of other people's performances
>- but there was less exaggeration in that sense of the word, there was
>less divergence between what could be called the masculine-feminine
>approach of the piano concerto between first theme and second theme,
>between the barking of the orchestra and the placidity of the piano.  It
>was a much more tightly welded unit, what I wanted to do.  Now, Lenny
>felt that in order to preserve the antagonism of orchestra for piano
>there ought to be greater contrast, there ought to be larger dynamic
>spans and greater changes of tempi and I was at that time, and still am,
>I may say, in a baroquish mood as far as even the nineteenth century
>concerto is concerned.  I was trying to bring a common pulse to the
>movements and to hold things together in that if rather arbitrary, if
>for me nevertheless, convincing way.  And this is what happened it was
>simply the meeting at two points of our particular metamorphosis at
>which he was more in favour of the tradition which has accrued around
>the concerto style and I wished at that moment to break with it.
>Q:    You say at that moment?
>A:    I may change, I only imply that I-
>Q:    No, have you always felt that way?
>A:    About that particular piece I have, I have not applied quite as
>extreme an analysis to other works of the same genre, but I have about
>that particular work.....so I was very greatful for the chance to do
>this for the chance to exhibit it nationally, so to speak, on the radio,
>and I was very grateful to Mr. Bernstein for going along with this, I
>only write (?) that he should get off the hook himself....."
>
>
>So, it would seem to me that there are two traditions that gg points to
>here, the tradition of the concerto itself (as a form), and the
>tradition of the performance of the concerto (as content?).  I am
>interested in the points he makes about the masculine-feminine
>dichotomies present, and wonder if this is a fair way to think of the
>performance of a concerto?  Of course, it is well known what he thought
>of performance after some time, and does this give some insight into
>why, perhaps, he felt that way?  Was there an antagonism between the
>orchestra and the piano inherent in the genre?
>
>Again, my apologies to the list for my moronic comments....
>
>