GG: 'bergs -- Salzburg Festival, 1959

[Alun Severn <alun@ukiah.demon.co.uk>]

Reading about Gould's 1959 Salzburg Festival performance and recording of
the the 'bergs in Friedrich's finally made me go out and get them. Amazing.
The precision, clarity...all there. I had expected a fuzzy recording, but
the newly mastered sound is superb. The 1959 'bergs are somewhere between
the 1955 debut and the '81 revisit, for me. I believe GG also came to b
immensely pleased with this radio recording, saying that he wished there
had been an audience of 20,000 rather than 2000 (jokingly, one presumes!).

Somewhere in the Friedrich book there is a passage about this recording --
but I'm damned if I can now find it. If anyone has the book to hand and can
track it through their no doubt copious underlinings, please let me know
where it occurs.

I just finished the book today, btw: the ending and Gould's last days and
death are superbly recounted, immensely moving. I just wanted it to go on
and on. Or perhaps I just wanted GG to go and on. Whichever, I finished it
with an aching heart.....

- Alun

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