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Hi Jon,
Good to hear from you and sorry it took so long for
me to get back to you. Don't worry about 'going on' about the Alchemist
DVD. If I remember correctly there hasn't been a whole lot of discussion
on the film over the list. I just watched the Gibbons again last night,
and you're right, that is one of the high points of the film. It's been a
while since I've actually watched much of Gould playing, but I don't recall him
shaking quite as much as that. Moving in his chair, sure. Directing
when he has a free moment with one of his hands. But that shaking strikes
me as something pretty unusual even for him. I could be wrong
though.
I have a few discs of harpsichordists playing the
Byrd and Gibbons music and Gould makes this music sounds more moody than they
do, more like a Brahms intermezzo, ;-) And for some reason, I
think of Gould's recording of early Strauss during one point of
the Salisbury Pavan. I'll have to listen to the recordings
back-to-back soon and see if they really do sound alike, or if my memory is once
again acting up. If it really does sound a little like Strauss, we've got
another reason, for me at least, for understanding how Gould could say something
like Gibbons being his favorite composer, not from a technically point of view,
but from a spiritual one. Also during that Gibbons commentary, he mentions
that Gibbons writes music they way he would have written it, had he lived in
during the same time as Gibbons and was working with similar
material.
Jim
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