Re: GG hagiography

[lstanwyk <lstanwyk@RYERSON.CA>]

Rachmaninov playing Chopin??  Amazing! Would love to hear it!  I have an
old recording of Prokofiev playing his 3rd PC - oddly enough, I prefer
Argerich's!

Cheers!

Bradley P Lehman wrote:
>
> ML wrote:
> > (...) I have been a follower of Glenn for about a year, I was first
> > sucked in by randomly viewing "32 short films" on the sundance channel.
> > Since then, I have learned of the greatest man to grace the 20th
> > century.  I know I may sound extreme, but he is practically a god to me.
> > I'm just 17 years old, and in today's society---where else can youth
> > look up to!?
>
> I found this in a CD booklet a few years ago:
>
> "Great pianists, we are told, are hothouse creations.  It's no use
> drifting into this career if you intend to reach the heights.  You must
> devote yourself to the quest for perfection as early as possible and stay
> with it, single-mindedly.  But [Glenn Gould], one of the greatest pianists
> of the 20th century (some would say *the* greatest), is a striking
> exception.  As a teenager his unwillingness to practise alarmed his
> parents, and one of the chief reasons for their sending him to study with
> [Alberto Guerrero] was that they had been assured that [Guerrero] would
> hold their son's nose firmly to the grindstone.  [Gould], however, wanted
> only to compose. (...)
>
> "By [1960] [Gould] had become--to borrow Harold C Schonberg's phrase--'an
> international piano idol.' The music of [Bach] (...) had become one of his
> specialties.  After hearing him play the [Goldberg Variations], the
> American critic W. J. Henderson wrote that 'there was nothing left for us
> but to thank our stars that we had lived when [Gould] did and heard him,
> out of the divine might of his genius...But one thing must not be
> forgotten: there was no iconoclast engaged; [Bach] was still [Bach].'"
>
> "Not everyone would agree with that last claim.  The pianist Claudio
> Arrau, for instance, was indignant that [Gould] could even think of
> re-composing the final bars of the [D Minor English Suite's Gavotte] (as
> he does on this recording), though there was hardly any dissent about the
> quality of his pianism *per se*.  The score-reading listener will find
> more departures from the written [Bach], here and in some of the other
> works on this disc.  But over and above these are moments of breathtaking
> musicianship.  (...) And even when he allows himself an adjustment here or
> there, [Gould] sees each piece whole.  Form, for him, was not merely a
> question of identifying sections; it was at the foundation of the musical
> experience.  In any piece, from the grand [Goldberg Variations] to the
> shortest of the [preludes and fugues], there was only one climax--or as he
> liked to put it, one 'point.' Miss it, as he told his friend the poet
> Marietta Shaginian, and 'the structure crumbles, the work goes soft and
> fuzzy.' The listener will find nothing soft or fuzzy here, only clarity,
> rhythmic vitality, rich variety of tone and mood, elegance and a
> [sparkling articulation] that can bring fresh appeal to music that today
> more than ever is in danger of being loved to death."
>
> ---
>
> Nice tribute, and it seems like typical GG hagiography.
>
> But why all the [brackets]?
>
> Because this essay was really about:
> [Sergei Rachmaninoff]
> [Nikolai Zverev at the Moscow Conservatory]
> [middle of the 1920's]
> [Chopin]
> [Second Sonata]
> [waltzes and mazurkas]
> [singing legato]
>
> It is in the notes to the RCA CD "Rachmaninoff Plays Chopin," recorded
> 1919-1935, reissued 1994.
>
> I find it intriguing that Rachmaninoff and Gould both got this type of
> very similar critical notices, but their piano playing and interpretations
> were more than "worlds apart" in style.  "Solar systems apart" might be
> accurate.
>
> Whom can a 17-year-old look up to?  Pick up the two Telarc CDs "A Window
> In Time" which are reissues of Rachmaninoff's piano rolls.
> http://music.search.shopping.yahoo.com/search/classical_album?title=a+window+in+time
> There's another great hero for you.  :)  Then you'll want to hear all his
> RCA recordings....
>
> 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