Re: Rachmaninoff?

[kimmoor@mindspring.com (Kristen Immoor)]

At 6:51 PM 5/5/97, Greg Romero wrote:
>And speaking of academic arrogance, I can't think of a better
>example of that then Glenn Gould.  Here is a guy who wrote six or seven
>complete works his whole life telling us that Mozart and all the Romantics
>(with the exception of Mendelssohns choral and organ works) and
>middle-period Beethoven were rubbish.  This is chalked up to his
>eccentricity, but I post a message ridiculing Rachmaninoff and I am
>swamped with condescending messages?  What about Gould's statements to
>effect that the 28th and 29th variations of the Goldberg's are real
>balcony-pleasers?  If anyone represents that kind of academic arrogance,
>it's Glenn Gould.  Programming Krenek, Berg, Scoenberg, Hetu, Valen, etc?
>It seems that one of Gould's favorite things to do was dump all over the
>classics of western music, and yet not one person criticizes him for it in
>this group.

        Whoo-hoo!! Go Greg! Speaking as a person prone to unpopular opinion
I agree with you on this one. One can only feel what one genuinely feels,
after all.

>     I think it would be safe to say, keeping Gould's musical aesthetics
>in mind, that GG would have disliked Rachmaninoff as well.

        Probably. I'd guess he put Rachmininoff in the same category as
Prokofiev, whom he felt was showy and crowd-pleasing. Not that there's
anything wrong with pleasing a crowd, GG himself deliberately pulled out a
bit of Prokofiev when he wanted to wow the audience at the Ex in Canada. He
called Prokofiev's 7th Son. the piano equivalent (though symbolic of more
modern weaponry,) of the 1812 Overture: a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. He went
on to say that it sounds a lot more difficult that it really is, which was
either a put-down or a credit, one can never be too sure with GG. To be
certain, he didn't feel much like studying Prok in depth, nor Rach neither,
his history of performing the two composers' work is negligible.

Kristen

___________________________________________________________________________

"...you can never say no to a stewardess in a dream."

                                                              -Glenn Gould