Chromatic Fantasy...and Fugue?

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@UMICH.EDU>]

>>I've been trying to find a recording of Gould playing the Bach Chromatic
>>Fantasy and Fugue. I can find the Fantasy easily enough, on a CD with a
>>lot of other assorted pieces, but I have not been able to find the Fugue
>>anywhere!
>>
>>Does it exist? Did Gould ever record it? If so, was it ever released? It
>>seems kind of strange that he would record the Fantasy but not the
>>accompanying Fugue! (Not to mention annoying, because the Fugue is my
>>favorite of the two pieces!)
>
>I checked on Barnes and Noble and both the Fantasy and Fuge are supposed
>to be on this recording.  [Sony 87553 from Sept 2002]


Are you sure?  BN and Amazon both list it as "903a" on that CD.  903a is
an early version of the fantasy without the fugue.  (You can hear it, for
example, on Robert Hill's recording on clavichord, Hanssler 92.107, "Bach
as Teacher".)

And to my knowledge, Gould never recorded that fugue.  Have you seen his
TV performance of the fantasy?  He played part of it, stopped in the
middle to offer comments about how much he hated the piece, then played
through the rest of it.  Even if he hadn't stopped for the comments, his
performance makes it plain that his heart isn't in it.

The situation is not clear from Nancy Canning's discography either [in the
back of the Friedrich book].  She cites a session from 10/1979 that was
never released [before 1989, the publication of this book].  The recording
released as Sony 52620 (Glenn Gould Edition) has only the fantasy, and the
notes there say it is from the 10/1979 session.  But Canning doesn't say
the fugue *wasn't* recorded, either....

That citation of 903a seems to me an unscrupulous way for Sony to
advertise the rerelease.  If my suspicions are correct and they're using
the 1979 session again, he's not really playing the early version there;
he's simply playing the fantasy without the fugue, and then some marketing
employee dug up a pseudo-musicological excuse for it.  (There are also
numerous manuscript sources for 903, all disagreeing in some
details...it's a minefield already.  There is no single definitive source
for this piece; every performer and every editor make their choices or do
a conflation.)  Anybody here actually have this newest rerelease 87553?
What do the booklet notes say?


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