Re: Bach Toccata's

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

All this talk about the toccatas this week has compelled me to take my
annual re-listen to the GG set, to find out if I like it yet.  My
assessment of it here is probably controversial among GG fans, but here
goes, anyway.

GG's way with the e minor is the best of the set.  He did this one in 1963
when he was still playing Bach more naturally than cerebrally (or
deconstructively, or whatever).  He uses subtle rubato, natural dynamic
gradation, and conveys easy musicality.  There is no especially odd
ornamentation or affected arpeggiation.  The performance flows well.  The
sound is a little dimmer than in the other toccatas, but the playing is so
much more alive.

I can pretty well tolerate his performance of the G major, g minor, and c
minor, all from 1979, though I'm not particularly excited about them
either.  His clarity and momentum go a long way toward projecting these
pieces (it's *one* way to play them...).  The performances are rather
one-dimensional overall: rhythmically stiff and hard-driven.  Yes, even
the slow sections are stiff, and the c minor's second section is
*unbelievably* slow.  On the surface, the fast parts sound lively with
GG's aggressive articulation, but there are some long stretches of
unvaried touch that get monotonous.

Now, the bad news: the rest of them, from 1976.  The d minor is a boring
performance (by GG standards).  I listened to it three times and still
kept wandering away.  Somehow it seems like a "contractual obligation"
performance, like some of his Mozart. GG doesn't sound particularly
involved with or committed to the music.

His performance of the D major is frustratingly anti-physical, and this is
Bach's most obviously exuberant toccata!  It needs the flash, the
flourish, the panache.  Instead GG reprises his "Appassionata" mode of ten
years earlier: he slows it way down, dissects it, drains the lifeblood out
of it.  The result is interesting, but not Bach.  And as with the
"Appassionata," GG spends the last few minutes halfway redeeming himself
by playing cleanly and normally.  If he was going to deconstruct the piece
anyway, why not finish the job?

The f# minor is a "train wreck."  First there's that huge problem of
pitch: there are at least ten very noticeable occasions where the pitch
jumps up or down from splices.  (Did they fix this in the latest GG
Edition?  I have the red-covered CD set M2K 42269 from 1987.)  The first
note of the piece fades in with no attack.  Then GG pulls out his
eccentric tricks that also plague the English Suites 3-6 and the violin
sonatas (...all his Bach from 1974-6!...): artificial staccatos, extreme
tempos, mannered arpeggiations, very measured trills.  It's excessive
control rather than going with the flow and gesture of the music.  And he
omits 14 bars of the piece!  Yes, the performance holds the attention, but
there's just too much that's weird about it to convince me.  (His
recording with Rose of the viola da gamba sonatas is even weirder, but
redeemed by being more playful.)  The tricks were plentiful in the D
major, too, but that one was already lost with his anti-dramatic approach.
"What was he thinking?"

In short, I wish GG had gone ahead with all seven of the toccatas in the
mid-60's when he did the e minor.

If I sound a little rough on GG in my disenchantment with these
performances, at least it's consistent: I think all his solo Bach recorded
before 1970 is marvelous, and then it drops off really fast after that.
His style went around the bend there somewhere.  Most of WTC II gets
through OK, but then the French Suites, English Suites, and toccatas are
less convincing.  The TV performance of the Chromatic Fantasy is a
massacre (and he did hate the piece: it's obvious).  The miscellaneous
preludes, fughettas, and other short pieces are somewhat better, but still
odd and iconoclastic.  The last Contrapunctus of the Art of Fugue is
interesting but too italicized: this piece is convincing without needing
GG's extra help.  Then the 1981 Goldbergs are a comeback of an insightful
Bach player: intensely probing and analytical, but not particularly joyful
anymore.  Then there's no more.  (I haven't heard the Italian Concerto
remake.)  What would his subsequent Bach have sounded like?

Comments?  Rebuttals?

Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.45716N+78.94565W
bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/