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Re: [F_MINOR] glenn gould's goldberg recordings

Brad Lehman wrote:

At 06:21 PM 3/31/2004 +0200, Jörgen Lundmark wrote:

In the case of the Goldberg -81, one must not forget that the
Yamaha has
a harsher, more metallic sound than a Steinway. That's something we
can't change in hindsight. Gould didn't seem to mind.



Indeed.  But, in the "State of Wonder" analog issue, that Yamaha at
least
sounds like a real Yamaha piano.  In the standard digital issue it's
harsher than they really are.


Are you sure? 


Yes.  All the way through high school and college I played on Yamaha
grands and uprights; I'm quite sure that in real life they sound more
like the tone of the 1981 analog recording than the digital version of
it.

Sure, it's also possible that Gould's particular Yamaha is harsher in
tone than some others; granted as a possibility.


As you say, one instrument is very different from another. Few pianists
would disagree when I say that a Yamaha in general has a more hard edged
sound than a Steinway. Also, the way the instrument is regulated --
Gould wanted an exteremly fast action -- makes a big difference.


The digital version
strikes me as off-putting, as if Gould didn't care much about beautiful
tone anymore.  The analog one reveals that he still did, or at least
that
he was *able to* produce beautiful tone.



I think that is quite a harsh view of the -81 version. I can perhaps
understand the view that this is more a Gould verison than a Bach
version (which on the other hand is a rather strange view, giving the
fact that piano playing should be regarded as more or less re-creative;
another and more far-reaching subject, I know). When I listen to -- say
variation 6 or variation 25 -- I cannot for my life understand anyone
claiming Gould to achieve an off-putting piano sound.



Perhaps my view of it *is* harsh.  But I say it as a person who has
played the Goldberg Variations on harpsichord for 19 years, and who
has more than 30 other recordings of it.  The way Gould handled rhythm
(as in, being too regular within phrases) in this performance really
bothers me.  Maybe I'm hyper-sensitized to that, because rhythmic and
articulative nuance are the main ways to be expressive on
harpsichord.  But, all of Gould's earlier performances 1954, 55, 59
seem to me much more natural in his graceful treatment of rhythm,
letting things be gently irregular.  In 1981 it's all squared off and
machine-like, by comparison.

In Gould's own terms, it's the "too much piano-playing" of his early
career (i.e. playing the piano as a piano, and with intuitive musical
nuances) that he scrubbed out of his approach in his middle and late
career.  He became more analytical, and treating the piano less as a
piano than as a generic instrument.  He wrote about that.


The sound of the keys struck and the way rhythm is handled isn't exactly
the same thing, is it. The very sound he creates is quite lovely in many
of the slower variations. The crispness of the attack was always there,
be it combined with a more fixed pulse in later years.



To me the -55 is
much more forced in that department, mostly because Gould chooses such
extreme tempi. (And yes, I know var. 6 is supposed to be a gigue, which
is hardly what Gould plays)



That marking was only discovered in 1975, with the discovery and
publication of Bach's handwritten corrections in his own copy of the
print.  I don't think we can hold it against Gould for not knowing
that in the 1950s.  :)  He worked from the 1938 Kirkpatrick edition,
mostly.


My point is that Gould could sound quite harsh (even though I wouldn't
really use that word) in his early career. Also, I prefer his
wonderfully meditiative playing of var. 6 in 1981 -- one of my favourite
variations, if played by Gould.



  The digital one strips away some
of his nuances, sounding (by comparison) stark and mechanical.  In my
opinion, of course.  That's after 20 years of listening to the digital
one
and disliking it, on the grounds that I feel it's musically shallow.



This is also an extreme exaggeration. You have all the right to dislike
the -81 recording. But to say it lacks musical depths does strike me as
very odd. Then you need to define that term very closely.



At the risk of sounding mumbo-jumboish: the music is in the spaces
between the notes.  Yes, the notes and rhythms are the same in the
digital and analog versions; those are merely facts about pitch and
duration.  The balance among voices is slightly different, too, but
again not terribly significant.  Here's the mumbo-jumboish part: the
"aura" of the performance seems totally different, to me.  In the
digital one it seems to me coldly mechanical, like a mental outpouring
of a preconceived interpretation, not really having much to do one way
or another with piano sound.  In the analog one, though, I sense that
Gould was listening to his own sound and reacting to it...much more
than the impression I get from the digital one.  It seems more like a
human being playing the piano, than like a disembodied mind.  That's
why I'm warming up to this performance in the analog but not the digital.


Musically shallow implies the opposite of reflection and deeply
inspired/carefully thought out, doesn't it. In that sense it's very hard
to understand your altered opinion to a minor change. The very nature of
a performance cannot really have to do with whatever the ambience is
like. Is it really fair to change one's BASIC impression of an
interpretation when presented to it in a different medium? I know some
listeners prefer the softer edges of the LP to the CD, but that has in
my mind little to do with the interpretation itself.



  Now,
in analog, I hear more depth in the interpretation.



I still claim that the difference between the two versions isn't that
sensational (do a blindfold test yourself with adjusted soundlevels).
Also, a change in this department cannot alter the main musical content
of a performance. Gould's artistic choices -- no matter what we think of
them -- is clear no matter how we filter his recordings.



Granted, my own A/B comparisons in autumn 2002 were not as carefully
controlled an experiment as yours.  I did the switching back and forth
myself, manually, and always knew which one I was listening to.
Still, the analog one *always* seemed to me to have more of Gould's
human presence in it; something that can't really be quantized by
measuring with an oscilloscope or whatever.


In my experience there's almost no way to get a valid impression when
comparing recordings without a proper blindfold test. This goes double
for recordings with DIFFERENT soundlevels. The ear almost always prefers
the one with the higher volume.

The test-CD I've mentioned has been played to recording engineering
students. All who could detect the difference -- again, it's much less
pronouned than one might think-- preferred the clarity of the digital
version.


And, I'm pretty sure that an artist's musical choices include more
than pitches and rhythms; filtering does matter.  I spent a couple of
months last fall working on the production of one of my own recordings
(pipe organ, in this case).  The engineer sent me several different
equalizations of the same recording, and the musical effect was (to
me) quite different, sounding less real in some cases than others.
Most notably, two of the tracks were [accidentally] recorded in mono
while the rest are in stereo.  We tried half a dozen different ways to
make the mono seem like stereo, but *every time* I felt that the music
was diminished, that it compromised my interpretation.  We finally
ended up going with the straightforward mono for those two: where it
gives the most accurate musical effect in my artistic opinion as the
guy who played (and wrote) the music.  Anything more artificial in it
*changed* the artistic choices, far too much.


My basic premise is more primitive: I like as simple as possible
recorded sound, where clarity isn't sacrificed at the altar of the
presence of the acoustic room itself. Too much reverberant, nicely
laid-back spineless recorded sound is being produced by modern recording
companies, especially by British labels.

With all the technical achievements of later years, it does make you
wonder why so many of the old recordings of 50's and 60's still stand
the test of time.
I believe a less complicated approach to microphone placing and the
diminished use of all those gadgets available would relieve much of the
muddiness of modern recordings.

I my mind, the recorded sound of Gould's -81 Goldbergs (digital version
of course :-)) does have two very positive things: clarity, together
with a natural piano tone that isn't in any way shrill. It's a "straight
in your face" recording, but I believe that is one of the many things
that appeals to us fans. The first variation is also an excellent test
track for sound equipment.



Everybody's experience is of course different.

Something else to keep in mind on the 1981 Goldbergs: compact discs
were never commercially available in Glenn Gould's lifetime.  We don't
know if *on CD* he would have preferred the analog or digital version,
if even given a choice between the two as we have now.  Digital
recording in the late 1970s and early 1980s made LPs sound cleaner


No way! At least not in this case. Adding noise (which analog recordings
does) will never make a recording clearer. Mind you, you have to compare
-- as we do now -- the very same recording done in digital and analog.
Nothing else will support a valid test; it'll only be a matter of taste
and has nothing to do with an actual sound quality discussion.

and quieter, and with greater dynamic range...still going back to the
analog tracking of a needle in a groove.  Digital was the new and
up-to-date fad at the time, and it got rid of tape hiss.  Who's to say
that Gould's choice of digital for the LP release was *entirely*
motivated by the musical/artistic effect it would make, and not just
convenience (easier editing) and staying _au courant_?


You're guessing here. The fact that the analog version is less bass
clear -- I defy you to prove me wrong -- wouldn't go well with Gould's
appreciation for contrapuntal transparency.



Hope this helps to clarify my earlier remarks, 

Yes, and thank you for using less dramatic words.
When choosing phrases like "musically shallow" and "off-putting piano
sound" you're not really making much sense.

Regards,
Jorgen Lundmark

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