Thanks for the welcome.
> I forget where it's at in the Glenn Gould
reader, but I think somewhere
> in there he makes that claim as well.
It's hard for me to take him
> seriously though, on this matter and I'd
imagine Schoenberg and Bach
> would come ahead of Gibbons on his favorites
list.
This is what Bruno Monsaingeon asks him and GG explains by saying that from
a technical perspective of course Bach would be a favorite
composer. Gibbons is more from a spiritual point of view. I
couldn't help laughing though. Not because it's a ridiculous choice or
anything like that but because it seems to fit so much with his special
character to say something like that.
> Anything else you'd like to talk about on the Alchemist DVD? I was
> particularly impressed with seeing Gould working in the studio.
Yeah, I couldn't help but think how much more effort they had to go through
to do things that are so much simpler on computers now. Apart from the
production side it was interesting to see his on-the-spot trial of different
interpretations of the one piece.
While GG was playing Gibbons my 4 year old daughter asked why he closed his
eyes and shook his head while he played. I tried to explain ecstasy as
best I could but she answered it herself later when she was bopping away to
Bach.
For me the best part of the Alchemist DVD is the Gibbons work and Bach's
Partita No 6. I had heard Gibbon's Lord of Salisbury Pavan before on the
Philips Great Pianists series but never really took a great deal of
notice. But when you see someone with eyes closed and head shaking you
have to stop and listen to what they are experiencing. When I first heard
this piece on the DVD it moved me. I'm not sure why but
maybe it's the way he is able to communicate something so beautifully
that I had previously not noticed.
As a newbie to the list I hope I'm not ranting with stuff you've all heard
before.
Jon
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