Re: GG:

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

On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Jan Littrell wrote:

> I noticed that "wrong" note too!  But with GG, you must assume it was a
> deliberate substitution since he was absolutely meticulous about his
> recordings -- he simply would not have done this accidentally.  (You can
> see him arguing about anything and everything in his interviews and
> writings -- his knowledge of music, especially Bach, was positively
> encyclopedic.)  And he is known for his anecdotal interpretations of the
> preludes and fugures.  I have wondered about this myself, however, and hope
> somebody knows why the piece was recorded this way.

GG wasn't habitually scholarly in his choices of editions.  In the case of
the WTC he probably simply learned it from an edition that had the
questionable note.

And as Bazzana points out, GG's understanding of Bach (and other
composers) was heavily filtered through the work of Schoenberg: motivic
ideas, analytical methods, etc.  It *is* possible that GG changed the note
deliberately due to some analysis of his, using those habits of
"improving" the compositions to better satisfy what he thought the
composer's intentions were or should have been.  Bazzana cites examples in
other repertoire (Mozart, Gibbons, etc.) where GG attempted to "correct"
passages he thought could be improved.  That's a performer's choice.  GG
had no qualms about doubling some of the bass in the Goldberg Variations
(last few variations) to "improve" the sonority.

But I think it's more likely he simply played from a variant edition.
There are plenty of them out there.  Czerny's, for example, is especially
variant, as it is supposed to be a record of the way Beethoven played the
WTC: dynamics, changed notes, changed registers, etc.  Anybody want to
look up the catalog of GG's possessions, find which edition(s) of the WTC
he had, and then check that directly?

Another possibility is that GG and his producer simply missed it, through
a misreading or whatever.  They weren't perfect.  I've still never
understood why GG let his Bach Toccatas go out to the world with so many
splice/pitch problems, or his Art of Fugue album with its hideously
out-of-tune moments that could have been fixed with about 15 minutes' work
by an organ tuner.

Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.45716N+78.94565W
bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/