Re: Glenn Gould Conducting the Siegfried Idyll

[Christopher Leung <leungc@umich.edu>]

Hello All,

Hey, this is the first time I write to the list!  

I don't know if I should feel sorry for saying this, but the Seigfried
Idyll is really among one of my favourites GG recordings!

The tempo is really much slower than all other recordings of the piece I
have ever heard.  I guess Gould didn't do too many strange things to the
piece except for the tempo.  The slowness gives a much more tranquil flow
to the music than the other recordings.  And having know that Wagner played
this for his wife on Christmas morning, Gould really made the music much
more Romantic than it is usually played.  Certainly, it can be argued that
Gould is getting unrealisticlly too slow at the end of the piece when the
most voices are not moving, but it really clicks for me.

BTW, has anyone listened to this particular piece, conducted by someone
else, after not hearing Gould's version for a while?  I tried this once,
and at the concert, I actually thought that the conductor was conducting at
Gould's tempo.  Of course I was surprised, so I went home, listen to
Gould's recording:  I was surprised at how slow Gould really conducted,
much slower than what I heard in the concert.  And I think it is
interesting that the piece doesn't sound as slow as it is in memory than
when I was listening to the recording.  Any comments?

Christopher
--On Wednesday, April 12, 2000, 10:18 PM -0400 "Anne M. Marble"
<amarble@abs.net> wrote:

> What are the opinions on this piece? I know a lot of the critics hated it.
> It's certainly not your (ahem) normal version of the piece. But I'd like
> some *real* opinions. What do other Glenn Gould fans think?
> 
> I read one critic who admitted that it the recording sounded lovely and
> that it was an interesting way of looking at the piece, but he insisted
> that it should never be the listener's first -- or primary -- exposure to
> the Siegfried Idyll. (Darn, that's a hard word to type!)
> 
> So before listening to the Glenn Gould version, I bought another version
> and listened to that a couple of times. Then, I sprang for the Glenn Gould
> version. I enjoyed it -- but at times, I felt as if the listener almost
> had to be Glenn Gould himself to appreciate every note and every nuance.
> I've listened to it several more times since then, and I think I'm
> beginning to appreciate those nuances even more.
> 
> By the way, I have it on a Sony CD. I've heard that on the original
> recording, you can hear GG saying "Wonderful" or something like that at
> the end. Is that true? If so, why did they take that out?!
> 
> ------
> Anne M. Marble
>