Gould in the Headlights

[Birgitte Jorgensen <bj@kemmunet.net.mt>]

Bradley Lehman wrote:

> So I was supposed to mention GG gratuitously, even though GG didn't
play
> the movements in question (Cp 12, 13, 18, and the canons) in his
commercial
> recording?  <smirk>  :)

No, but you're supposed to mention GG gratuitously because this is a
list
dedicated to the discussion of Gould's work and life.

> OK, in the Sony release (GG Edition) there's that radio version of GG
> playing Cp 13 on piano, but note: GG plays only one half of it!  (GG
> doesn't play the mirror version that has the famous unplayable note in

> it.)  And, uncharacteristically for GG, he rushes the
> tempo...nerves?  Moreover, GG misses the last soprano note of m28;
> simplifies the alto in m35 (mis-memorized?); and smudges a note in
> m37.  (As I said, this piece takes a bit of luck to come off
> perfectly...even for Our Hero.  If a piece trips up Glenn Gould
> technically, making him tense up and miss notes and rush, you *know*
it's
> tricky.)  I suspect that GG's assessment of these mirror fugues would
be
> that they are "deucedly awkward."  They are.

Okay, I'm now duly satisfied that you have met the minimum required
level of
Gould content.

> More than 200 years ahead of his time, Bach sympathetically
anticipated the
> psychological phenomenon of terror that a deer experiences on the
highway:
> freezing and staring into the oncoming headlights.

Or perhaps he intuitively sensed the coming of the phenomenon known as
Spinal
Tap, which would be enough to make anyone empathetically one with that
deer.

> As Pablo Casals pointed out, "Bach is the
> profoundest of every feeling."
>
> How's that for rectifying the incompleteness?

Rectified. I am now complete, and sufficiently impressed to raise the
assessment to a 10.1 rating. You get a bonus one-tenth of a point for
that
Casals quotation.

Birgitte