Re: The Listener as Artist

[Marco Poli <poli@imiucca.csi.unimi.it>]

dear f-minors


Neil wrote

> Oddly, I do go to piano recitals though. Why does no-one give all Bach
>>concerts
>these days ???



Maybe you should come to Milano, Italy ..... in the last three months, to
the same concert society, we had the opportunity to listen to the Goldberg
variations performed in autumn by Andras Schiff, and last week by Rosalyn
Tureck!  Very interesting confrontation.   In both cases, but especially in
the latter, there was a long interval of silence before applause started
(by the way, in the program notes just a couple of weeks before, Schiff,
who is now playing the complete piano works by Schumann, asked the audience
to respect just this pause of meditation, especially after some very
introspective pieces.   Who in the world could destroy the spell at the end
of Beethoven's Bagatelles op. 126 by applauding loudly?).

Apart from this, Bach's works are performed quite often: a complete cycle
of the Cantatas has been under way for some time.

Thinking of Beethoven's Bagatelles op. 126 reminded me of how difficult I
found to accept Gould's interpretation the first times I listened to them.
I was at the time accustomed to other more classical performances
(Schnabel, or Kempff), and I found Gould's tempi so slow and deliberate
that I felt the music was falling apart.   After many months I played again
the CD, while in a more receptive mood, and I suddenly understood (at least
I think so), the message he wanted to convey.    His interpretation is now
the one I prefer above all, the one which gives me not only the strongest
emotion, but also the deeper insight in Beethoven's (and Gould's) mind.  By
the way, do you know that Backhaus, who never played the Bagatelles before
an audience allegedly said that this was music one played for himself, not
for the public?


Marco