Gould, Sentiment and Chopin

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

>When you think about it, Gould's
> failure to record Chopin is a great loss for us.
> He did seem to claim
> that he just didn't find Chopin musically/structurally challenging
> enough
> and sometimes he rejected Chopin as being too emotional, in which
> case I think he confused the composer with some of his contemporary
> piansists.

But Gould *did* record Chopin: the sonata #3 in B minor.  It was a
broadcast recital from Toronto 7-23-1970 and was available as Music & Arts
CD 683, 1991.  I have it here.  Kevin Bazzana wrote the program notes, a
perceptive and detailed analysis of the performance.

Bazzana then had less to say about this performance in his later book,
dismissing it thus (and I agree with him):

"(...) The resulting performance of the sonata draws on the same rhythmic
premisses as his Baroque and Classical performances: he declines to use
conventional tempo shifts to articulate theme groups, and applies his
usual practice of exploring inner voices at the expense of the primacy of
lyrical melody.  Gould ultimately did not consider the results of the
experiment to have been particularly successful in this case, and he was
right: the performance (perhaps excepting his lean, _moto-perpetuo_
finale) is actually rather dull, and certainly offers little insight into
Chopin.  But it is the urge to make the experiment in the first place that
is revealing."  (p73-74)


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