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Re: BWV 54 conducted by Glenn Gould

At 12:07 PM 8/28/2000 -0600, jerry wrote:
BWV 54 conducted by Glenn Gould

  I found out that the famous pianist Glenn Gould recorded a Bach cantata
  as a conductor! Here are the details:

  Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantata BWV 54, Overture BWV 831, Fugue BWV 552,
  Concerto BMV 1052 & 1054
  Glenn Gould, Russell Oberlin and others
  Music and Arts 654
(...)
 Cantata BWV 54 was discussed in the Bach Cantatas Mailing List couple of
 months ago (the discussion can be seen in the following address:
 http://freespace.virginnet.co.uk/simon.crouch/BCArchive/BWV%2054.htm)
 and nobody mentioned this recording during the discussion. Has anybody
 ever heard this recording? I am curious to hear his (or her) opinion.
(...) 
The BWV 54 is downright weird.  Gould's realization of the continuo is
bizarre.  I am not myself a keyboard player, but all of the activity seems to
be in the right hand, with little realization of the figures in the left and
a complicated and sinuous, almost melodic realization in the uppoer voices.
The instrument is even more bizarre, and I think it must be one of those
doctored "harpsipianos" with which Gould was enamored at one point.  The male
alto is the unique and remarkable Russell Oberlin.  Unfortunately, his German
accent is appalling.  The performance, however, is impassioned in the best
sense of the word.

It's from April 8, 1962.

I agree with the quoted assessment here by TNT (presumably Teri Noel
Towe?).  The performance is pretty strange, summed up by saying "there are
some strange accents."

There's Oberlin's odd German, and the harpsipiano plonking along with its
odd sound, and GG's continuo realization from outer space.  There are the
passages where GG pounds out melodic lines (both in the strings and in the
vocal part!) which he thinks need extra emphasis.  Then there are the
passages where GG suddenly doubles or halves the tempo, presumably to set
apart the composition's sections and to make large contrasts of mood.  Then
there are the passages where GG stops playing with his left hand, because
he needs it to conduct the non-obvious interpretive things he's having
everybody do, and because he's left-handed.  Sometimes the string players
seem not quite convinced or unanimous about what's going on in
there.  Another problem with Oberlin's delivery (in addition to his German
diction) is the way he sings the text's weak syllables as loudly as (or
louder than) the strong syllables...very unnatural.  Overall the whole
thing sounds like a bizarre experiment where GG's trying to see how far he
can get things to go: just trying various things for the sake of finding
out what happens.  It's of course interesting.  It sounds like Bach with a
lot of playfully affected accents.  It's hard to figure out what the point
is, though.

(Compare it with the haunting performance by Alfred Deller with young
Gustav Leonhardt and young Nikolaus Harnoncourt in 1952...now on Vanguard
8106.  It was Leonhardt's and Harnoncourt's very first recording with
period instruments, and the string players are finding their way into the
technique...it's a little rough.  Deller's German isn't great either.  But
in overall moods, Deller & co. catch everything very strongly, and it's
totally different from the GG/Oberlin.  They seem content with letting Bach
make his own points beautifully; GG seems to have had a need to "make
something" of the piece.)

Back to the GG disc...right before this cantata there is an absolutely
marvelous performance of the French Overture (BWV 831) from March 13,
1969.  I think it's musically better than his commercial recording of it a
few years later: more natural phrasing, serenity where appropriate, and a
beautiful tone.

And there are two of the keyboard concertos (BWV 1058 in G minor and BWV
1056 in F minor), both played nicely.  Those are from November 15, 1967,
and September 11, 1957.

And then a two-minute fragment from the "St Anne" fugue (concluding piece
of the 3rd book of the "Klavieruebung"), played on the organ with good
clarity and hardly any eccentricity.  I wish he'd done the rest of it, plus
the prelude.

The recorded sound is variable...tending toward the rough side.

And they picked one of the oddest GG photos for the cover.  It was taken
when he was obviously twenty-something.  He looks like a wild man with the
hair going everywhere, and his left hand pressed against his temple
contorting his face into a weird expression.  His eyebrows are at an angle
that makes him look like a devil.  As with the cantata, it's hard to know
what to make of all this.

All around, it's a mixed disc.


Bradley Lehman
Dayton VA
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl