I've just read Gould's article on Wendy Carlos. Frankly, I didn't know
what she
was before - I was interested in electronic music several years ago but
never
reached her and when I got hooked on Bach, I somehow didn't reach her
from this
end too. And that's fine by me :)
Was Gould joking/writing sarcastically or was he serious? I can think
of only
two reasons why he was so kind ("a recording of the decade"?):
1. Electronic music was still very unusual back then and the mix with
Bach was
absolutely original - the sounds different from any other performance
of Bach
ever.
2. Gould dreamed of having the voice separation that only computer may
produce
(I listened to some Carlos and heard things that can be barely heard in
the
usual recordings - and I got one voice in the middle, one on the left,
another
on the right etc - freaky).
Voice separation is a great thing, one of the main Gould's valuable
traits. But
he has a load of other good traits (capability of playing very slowly
and
tenderly or fast and vigorously, very clean trills etc, great momentum,
creative
alternating of staccato/legato and so on and so forth).
So how could he seriously marvel at a frigging junk that happened to
have one
good feature?
Juozas Rimas Jr (not the one playing)
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/141/juozas_rimas.html