GG in the Moonlight

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

Larry wrote:

>("Glenn Gould didn't play Bach," my neighbor informed me.  "He played
>Glenn Gould."  I still don't know if this was praise or criticism.).

I'm of the same opinion, especially of his Bach work from the last half of
his career.  It's sort of "Glenn Gould Playing Glenn Gould's Ideas About
Schoenberg's View of Bach."


>A ten-year old student of mine was delighted to explain to me why GG's
>"Moonlight Sonata" is so darn fast (I didn't quite figure out her
>reasoning, but it wasn't just a Bad Joke, others to the contrary).

Count me among those who think his performance of this piece is fantastic
from beginning to end.  He's one of the few who play the first movement
_fast enough_ (well, it could be even a little faster yet) within the
character that Beethoven clearly notated.  The time signature is cut C:
two big beats per bar, NOT four or twelve.  GG plays those two beats with
an excellent flow and sustained feeling.  And the harmonic rhythm of the
piece is very slow: another clue that it should move along in two rather
than four or twelve.  In GG's performance the phrases go somewhere, which
they don't in other people's performances that are half (or more!) too
slow.  The music is spacious without dawdling.  GG catches Beethoven's
warning that it should be played as delicately as possible.  (And I think
GG could have smeared the pedaling even more, since that's what Beethoven
asked for too...he could have got a bit stronger mood that way.)

Then the second and third movements are even better; GG brings to it so
much nuance and care with detail, but also an overarching clarity of form
and drama.  And GG's not doing anything eccentric.  He's just playing the
music VERY well.  The music grows organically out of the first movement's
character.  (This _is_ a "Sonata quasi una fantasia" after all, not three
separate movements.)  On LP it's all one band, not three separate tracks.
I don't know about the latest CD issue, but in the Odyssey set I have
somebody made track points as three separate movements.  Wrong!  So much
for the unity of GG's performance ....

On the LP his liner note about this piece is similarly positive.  I'll
type it here, but it's also in the _Reader_:

"The Sonata Op 27 #2 (the so-called _Moonlight_ Sonata), although
comprised of three superficially disparate movements, is a masterpiece of
intuitive organization.  As opposed to the _Pathetique_, which recedes
emotionally from the belligerence of its opening _Allegro_ to the more
modest claims of its concluding _Rondo_, the _Moonlight_ Sonata escalates
from first note to last.  Beginning with the diffident charm of what is
unquestionably Beethoven's best-loved and most abused melody, the ternary
grace of the opening _Adagio_ resolves into the tantalizingly ambivalent
whiff of D-flat major that constitutes the second movement.  This fragile
and antumnal _Allegretto_, in turn, disappears within the flash flood that
is the concluding _Presto_.  Indeed, the _Presto_ movement of this work
seems to crystallize the sentiments of the other two and confirm an
emotional relationship at once flexible and assured.  Written in the form
of a sonata-allegro, such as Beethoven would normally employ as a first
movement, it is one of the most imaginatively structured and
temperamentally versatile of all his finales.  But, because of its
cumulative zeal, the _Moonlight_ Sonata is deservedly high on the all-time
eighteenth-century hit parade."

The preceding and following parts of his essay are about the weaknesses of
the _Pathetique_ and _Appassionata_, which he illustrates in the way he
plays them.  The _Moonlight_ is the centerpiece of this LP.  The whole
package (essay plus performance) is a didactic marvel, like a
lecture-demonstration.  GG's playing and essay agree with one another, no
matter what the customer may think.  He was out to make his points.  It's
a concept album, with all three sonatas to be listened to in that
sequence.  GG is showing the comparative values of (in his opinion) an OK
piece, a masterpiece, and a dud.  The package is GG's commentary about the
music.

On CD, where the sonatas are on different discs or in a different box,
this cumulative effect is lost.

I was glad when Anne asked about the cover photo a few days ago, because
that made me get out the album and play it all the way through instead of
listening to the performance on CD.  I'm not usually all that fond of the
_Moonlight_ (played by anyone) so I rarely listen to it...but hearing it
here in the middle of GG's didactic commentary about Beethoven, I realize
that it's a better piece than I thought it was!


Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl  or  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl

"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot