GG: which Goldbergs? (not *again*!)

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

Warning: very long and probably oppressively opinionated at some spots, 
but hey, these are personal reactions to works of art: 
=======================================================================

After reading other people's recent comments (see some responses, below)
about the different GG Goldbergs, and reflecting on my own earlier
comments, I decided to do another direct A/B/C/D comparison of all the
recordings.  Usually I listen to just one of them, and choose depending on
my mood or my reasons for listening to the piece. 

So this week I've listened closely all the way through all four, and
included also the recent recording by Konstantin Lifschitz as sort of a
"control" to the experiment.  I listened to some spots more than once, and
to the entire 55 and 81 twice. 

Keep in mind that these are opinions about works of art, so the standard
"your mileage may vary" disclaimer is on at all times!  These recordings
are apparently successful works of art, because they encourage so many
different reactions from different people who hear them. 

My opinions from the comparison, this time: 

54: Fluent, natural, unforced, with a decent sense of direction.  GG
sounds interested in the piece, without doing anything especially strange. 
Overall the interpretation seems a bit bland: it never really settles into
high excitement or gentle repose, just keeps moving along.  A nicely
musical performance, but nothing extremely memorable.  The music itself
comes through very well; GG's playing doesn't draw too much attention to
itself. 

55: Passionate Bach: not just the whoosh of the fast parts, but the
intensity of slow passages.  At the same time GG also lets the piece have
a sense of dance and poise, grace.  I especially like the tonal control he
has when playing lightly.  Phrasing and articulation are generally
natural; occasionally a little overdriven and breathless, needing more
rise and fall within and between phrases.  Excellent piano playing, using
the instrument's resources: something very special.  Good recording for
late-night listening (as was Bach's intention for the piece): beauty,
interest, serenity, a sense of joy.  The overall architecture seems
sometimes disjointed from one variation to the next, with starting and
stopping, but the structure that Bach wrote into the piece takes care of
the overall form.  That is, GG allowed Bach's form to work, so the starts
and stops aren't terrible.  Well, one exception: variation 25 is so slow
(though lovely) that it ends up being much longer than everything else,
and sort of monopolized side 2 of the ol' LP. 

59: Everything I said of the 55, plus: whimsical, improvisatory, and a
good sense of continuity and flow from variation to variation.  Very good
balance of attention, drawing the listener to hear different lengths of
phrases, sometimes several levels at once, and never just the individual
notes.  Sounds as if he's taking risks, to put the music across vividly
for his listeners.  That pays off, giving a sense of occasion: player and
listener are both caught up in the excitement of the moment (and this is
true of slow moments as well as fast).  That is what music is about, in a
large sense: something real happening all the time, with moments where
it's deeply moving, and moments where it's carefree and fun.  It's all
here.  Also, this is the only performance of GG's where the ornaments
really sound like ornaments, with the right amount of weighting (i.e.
less, and a looser rhythmic profile).  This performance, for me, blows the
other three out of the water, despite the minor finger slips.  It's GG at
his farthest remove from being a control freak.  He has so much grounded
security with the piece here that he's willing to take chances, to live a
little, to try some fresh things just for anyhow.  It shows. 

81: GG seems discontent with letting Bach be the composer: he has to
tinker with strange emphases, rather than letting the music happen.  It's
as if he doesn't trust the listener to "get" the piece unless GG both
underlines everything and further scribbles on it with an orange
highlighter pen.  For the underlining part, there is far too much
intensity at the note level, with every note given importance at the
expense of larger phrasing.  Yes, there is good clarity of texture, but it
is done with artificial articulations and strange dynamic balances.  And
the ritards and the tempo proportions sound contrived, carefully measured,
not like natural breathing.  And the gradual speed-up of variation 19 is
disconcerting. It seems that GG's odd elements are sometimes there to
illustrate compositional structure...fine, to a point, but they are *so
much* there (the orange highlighter) that they pedantically get in the way
of the music.  Too pointillistic, and sometimes arbitrary, such that it
draws attention to itself.  There is no evident spontaneity;  everything
is stiff and over-controlled, maybe even neurotic. The performance is
intellectually interesting but not much fun, and certainly not relaxing or
pleasant.  I'd rather hear Bach without having GG in my face, distracting
from enjoyment of the music.  And I don't get the sense that GG is
*listening* as he plays; he's making things happen, forcing the issue,
instead of reacting to what the music and instrument would do on own. 
It's as if he doesn't trust the intuitive right side of his brain anymore,
only the analytical left.  He's creating something of his own, rather than
cooperating with what Bach put there, and the result seems disastrously
one-sided to me.  Obviously, there's no disputing GG's creativity or his
ability to get the sound he wants (i.e. his technique).  But I think it's
misguided. 

Konstantin Lifschitz: it's hard to hear much sense of at-the-moment
creativity.  The playing is fluent, with fast variations very fast and
clean.  The slow variations often just sit there, going nowhere, and are
ultimately dull with all the notes having similar importance.  He presents
a smooth surface to the music, where everything is as it looks on the
page, nothing very surprising to engage the attention.  Yes, he changes
basic articulation for sections at a time, to give some structure, but
then all the notes have that same articulation as their neighbors, instead
of being differentiated into hierarchies as they go along.  And those
choices of articulation seem like a random series of tone colors.  I
couldn't hear much of a coherent overall shape, either, just a series of
cleanly-played short movements with lots of notes in them.  Too
"objective."  It's the same problem I have with the way Keith Jarrett
plays Bach on the harpsichord or piano: he doesn't do enough with the
music beyond getting the notes (but his Goldbergs are more successful than
his WTC).  Boring.  Ooo, Lifschitz can play fast there.  Still boring. 
Hey, interesting coloristic articulation there...no, wait, in the bigger
picture it's still boring, because that color continues unchanged for too
long.  It's as if he turns on ideas, then lets them run on autopilot until
it's time for the next idea a few minutes later.  I haven't heard the
Andras Schiff recording for a while, but it's definitely much better than
this.  He lets things happen moment to moment. 

-----

Some personal history with the four GG recordings: 

The 55 was the Bach recording (not just GG's, but *any* Bach) which made
me as a teenager (in the late 1970's) start liking Bach.  He made the
music interesting and beautiful, never boring.  Soon after that I heard
his recording of the Partitas, and also thought they were wonderful for
similar reasons. 

By the time the 81 was issued, I'd heard about half the existing GG
recordings, across his repertoire, from working at a radio station and
listening to everything they had on the shelves.  I'd also recently
switched from piano to harpsichord, and begun studying organ.  I enjoyed
playing Bach's and earlier music, but thought it sounded wrong on the
piano, and especially *felt* wrong on the piano (the physical motion of
playing the music).  I was ready to try it all on the instruments it was
written for.  After switching, I still tried things occasionally on the
piano, but it usually distracted me from playing with natural motions...I
kept hearing GG's interpretations as I played, and they didn't flow the
same way I knew they could on the harpsichord.  I also heard the _Piano
Quarterly_ soundsheet where GG explained his 81 interpretation to Tim
Page.  Cognitively, the tempo-continuity idea made a lot of sense to me,
and it was helpful to think about with regard to many pieces, not just the
Goldbergs.  It informed some of my choices in 84-5 when I worked up my own
concert performances of the Goldbergs (on harpsichord), but I was also
careful not to make tempo continuity sound too pedantic (as I thought it
did in the 81 GG).  I also studied dozens of recordings by other
harpsichordists and pianists, as well as the score. 

When the 59 was issued in the mid-1980's, I bought the disc mostly to hear
GG's live Goldbergs, interested to hear what would be different from the
55.  I was pleased that this performance made the piece sound especially
like a lot of fun, confirming what I had experienced in playing it myself. 
But I was most impressed with the Sweelinck and Schoenberg pieces on the
same disc.  I worked out the Sweelinck for myself, to play for an organ
audition in 1987.  Wonderful piece. 

Then the 54 was issued in 1995, and I bought it for completeness, and for
the novelty of hearing GG before the 55 version. There was also an
interesting article about it in Allegro's marketing brochure that year. 
The more I kept listening to all four (occasionally, not all at once), the
more the 59 and 55 went to the top of the stack, as most pleasing and
interesting overall. 

For about the past ten years or so, the 81 has really got on my nerves, as
an annoyance.  Yes, it has a few serene moments, especially in the Aria,
and a lot of immediacy. But some of the rest of it is almost unlistenable,
the way he pounds out the notes.  There were some years when I couldn't
get all the way through it at all, because it was so frustrating and ugly,
so oppressively heavy in the left hand especially.  It was still difficult
this time: that 81 interpretation doesn't fit with my sense of Bach, now
that I've played most of Bach's harpsichord works (and especially the Art
of Fugue).  I know what the phrasing can feel like, the way Bach's whimsy
gives a perfect balance of predictability and delightful asymmetry from
note to note.  Bach is extremely creative, doesn't often get into ruts:
there is usually something fresh happening (for a good example, see the
bowings of the solo parts in the violin concertos).  But GG generally
steamrolls over this, and substitutes his own agendas.  It's (in my
opinion) a gross distortion of the music, extremely contrived and
artificial, and really the only way I can tolerate it is as a head trip,
the way GG brings out unusual parts.  It gets me into the listening mode
of "what weird thing is he going to do now in his unyielding bash through
the phrases?" rather than "ahh, I'm enjoying the piece, Bach's
creativity."  

I guess what I meant by writing that the 81 is almost a disaster is that
when I listen to it, the experience for me is so one-dimensional: 
intellectual stimulation, little more.  GG is so introspective here that
he gets in the way of the music; all I hear is the way the piece got
filtered through the structure of his brain.  It doesn't sound like joyful
and graceful music-making.  It sounds like pedantic Gould, not like Bach. 
In the earlier recordings he was at least still reacting to the way the
music was written, listening along with it, and adding his personality as
a spice.  In 81 his contribution went beyond spice.  It's just too
intense, too artificially flavored, too much Gould instead of Goldberg
Variations.  Ugh. 

So, the comparison this week doesn't change my earlier statements much,
other than clarifying them.  I still put 59 on top, followed fairly
closely by 55.  Then after a gap it's hard to choose between the 54 and
81; the former is too bland, the latter too spicy and distorted.  I think
I'll still prefer the 54 slightly on interpretation, but the 81 does have
some good points in intellectual clarity and sound quality, so it's close. 
I guess I'm a little more charitable to the 81 now than I was a few years
ago, so let's move it up a little: tied for third best, instead of fourth. 

==========

Responses to some of your posted comments from this week:

Kristen "Moonbeam" Immoor wrote of the 81:

>     Ah, but I never said it was an improvement, just a wonderful 
bookend to
> a career that went from the fire of the 55's to the drama (melodrama?) of
> the 81's. Personally, I enjoyed the second GBerg's a lot more once I heard
> Gould's interview with Tim Page in which he dissects the second recording
> rather thoroughly and explains his rethinking of the piece. The lumbering
> quality of the work made more sense once I heard his reasoning behind 
it. I
> don't know if I necessarily prefer it to his original effort, but I can
> definitely understand the emphasis on the 'unity' in the interpretation and
> I can see what he was going after. I do agree with you that it tends to
> paint a tragic psychological portrait of Gould at that point in his life;
> it really demonstrates the clutching grip he held on the music, the way he
> slowly threaded out one line at a time, like fishing lines of silk being
> lowered into inky water. I don't know if it's completely uptight on his
> part, it might just be very mellow - I can't decide. In any case, I don't
> think it's a disaster by any means, I have a hard time classifying anything
> as disasterous unless it's really a waste of soundwaves. To me it's just
> another interpretation, another way of seeing, and it tells me a little bit
> more about what he was going through that year. (Gawd, I feel like such a
> hippie!)

Yes, the Page "interview" helped me appreciate it better, too.  I think
Gould's unity *idea* as he spoke about it is more convincing than the way
he actually demonstrated it in the recording.  Maybe I just have that
impression because of the other reasons why I don't like the recording
(explained above).  I like your image of the fishing lines of silk. 
Gould's "clutching grip" on the music is one of the main reasons I don't
prefer this recording....I think he's holding it too tightly, instead of
letting the phrases breathe as naturally as Bach wrote them.  (What was
that play with the character named Lenny who accidentally killed animals,
hugging them too tightly?)

David Daniel wrote:

> I really can't consider the '81 performance to be a disaster at all.  I 
like
> it better musically.  It seems less virtuosic.  When Glenn recorded it the
> second (fourth) time, he was less interested in making a good 
impression and 
> recorded it how he really thought it ought to sound. (...)

So you're implying his earlier versions were a sellout to pleasing the
crowd, or otherwise "dishonest"?  Or that his earlier versions were
immature interpretations, not fully worked out, because he hadn't yet
figured out how he thought it ought to sound?  Or that "virtuosity" is a
less lofty goal than a more probing interpretation would be?  Implications
such as those of course echo pretty well what Gould himself wrote (about
"virtuosity" many places, about the crowd-pleasing Partita #5, etc.), or
said in his "interview" with Page about this performance.... 

But I think Gould wasn't necessarily his own best critic, either.  And is
there anything necessarily wrong with wanting to make a good impression? 
In my opinion, when he was still out there playing for the public instead
of sequestered away, his playing generally had more communicative
immediacy.  His later playing became more self-absorbed, arguably less
concerned with what the general public would want to hear...GG playing
more for himself rather than for others.  Yes, he came up with some very
interesting interpretations that way, and playing music for oneself is a
valid approach to music-making. 

The results can sound narcissistic, though, as I think the 81 Goldbergs
do.  An interpretation made carefully in his own self-image, rather than
an interpretation based anymore on his own intuitive musicality, or on
performance traditions, or on instrumental quality/sound (playing the
piano like a piano), or on (dare I say?) Bach's balanced art.  I think the
81 performance is foremost a portrait of Gould's mind, rather than being a
performance that allows Bach to be Bach, the piano to be a piano, the
Goldbergs to be the Goldbergs (a piece written to amuse and please an
insomniac, after all), and a musical experience that unfolds naturally and
inevitably, with the player in service of the music. GG's interpretive
meddling and choices get in the way of all that, for me.  The 81 doesn't
line up with what I normally experience with this piece, either as a
listener (having heard at least 40 different recordings), or as a
performer (having played this piece many times both for myself and in
public, on the instrument which Bach intended).  It's out there on its
own, apart from even GG's own earlier efforts. 

Stated another way: I think that the 81 is not really a performance of the
Goldberg Variations, the piece by Bach; it's a performance of some other
piece about GG, happening during the time period in which all the notes of
the Goldberg Variations get played.  As a portrait of GG's mind, though, I
suppose this performance is "successful" as a different kind of art. 

> From a personal point of view, I also like the '81 better because I 
hear more
> GOULD in it.  It's not happy and gleeful, like a kid trying to dazzle 
the 
> world with his first recording, it's darker and more brooding.  I 
really 
> dissagree with "All intellect, no soul."  I think there are both.  It
> is filled with what I associate as being the real Glenn Gould. 

I agree with you, that there's more of the later Gould in it.  To my
opinion, too much Gould, not enough Bach, and not enough simple *play* or
gentle pleasure.  It's a matter of degree and preference, I guess. Sure,
there's a place for darkness and brooding...but not necessarily in the
Goldberg Variations.  That's why the world has Allan Pettersson's
symphonies, Shostakovich's quartets, etc. 

I hate the way GG played the final Contrapunctus from the Art of Fugue,
too, as I wrote a few months ago.  It's a creepy trek through GG's mind,
rather than the music of the piece itself. 

John P. Hill wrote:

> I *much* prefer the '81 Goldbergs, for many of the reasons mentioned by
> David.
> 
> The '55 version is a distaster in terms of sound quality;  it may be
> the worst *sounding* piano recording I own.  In terms of performance,
> it sounds very much like a young virtuoso pianist who wants to push
> the envelope on all fronts:  "I can play this movement ___________
> (insert appropriate term: faster, slower, with more intensity, etc...)
> than you've ever heard or imagined it."  There's no doubt that it was
> a pianistic tour de force on a fairly unpopular (at the time) piece of the
> keyboard repertoire.  But in comparison to the other recorded versions,
> this one hasn't aged too well.  It sounds to me like there's a good bit of
> empty virtuosity there; precisely the kind of display that GG eshewed in
> later recordings for LP, video and film.

I have to disagree with you here, on several counts.  If anything is
pushing the envelopes, it's the 81. Certainly for intensity, at least, and
probably also on the "slower." 

And I think true "virtuosity" means (roughly) "the ability to project a
piece fluently, with an artistically convincing profile, and a rich and
well-controlled palette of different sounds: many simultaneous dimensions
at which different listeners can connect and find something valuable." 
Above all, true virtuosity doesn't call attention to itself, but makes the
listener concentrate on the wonder of the musical experience.  True
virtuosity in a performance makes a composition sound as great as it is,
or perhaps even better than it is.  And it somehow also transcends the
"everything in its proper place, yet still boring and too predictable"
level.  Yes, the 55 is virtuosic in this sense, but so is the 81: GG is
able to present a remarkable range of sounds, a superhuman control.  He
can get whatever sounds he imagines.  In the 81, unfortunately, these
controlled sounds call attention to themselves instead of being at the
service of the music.  And the 81 has plenty of dimensions, and presents
an artistically convincing profile, sure...but it's not the profile of the
Goldberg Variations!  It's a profile of GG. 

If, on the other hand, one thinks of "virtuosity" in a more typical way as
"able to play fast notes in a splashy manner," well then, what do you do
with Gould's film performance of Ravel's "La Valse," and his recording of
the Prokofiev 7th Sonata "to out-Horowitz Horowitz," and maybe also his
promotion of Strauss' "Burleske," a supremely empty pianistic showpiece if
there ever was one?  Seems to me GG did those things mostly to prove to
the public that he, too, could flash out the empty virtuosity if he really
cared to. 

As for sound quality of the 55, yes, the reproduction is maybe a little
dim or gray by later standards.  But that really doesn't bother me; I
regularly listen to and enjoy recordings from the 1920's and earlier. 
They have their own kind of immediacy that pushes sound quality into the
background (but not for my wife, who hates to hear the surface noise from
former 78's).  Ever hear the marvelously present recorded performances by
Rachmaninoff and Bartok? To me the GG 55 sounds like typically solid
mid-50's mono, sort of like the sound of Leonard Pennario's early Capitol
recordings, or Steuermann's Columbia album of Schoenberg, or Horowitz on
RCA, or Lipatti (late 40's), or Kapell...not at all obtrusive. 

> 
> I think that many of Gould's early performances suffer from this syndrome
> of trying to create something unique or unusual regardless of the musical
> costs involved.  At times, this creates something beautiful and indeed
> one-of-a-kind (try the B-flat minor prelude from WTC Bk1), but at other
> times the result is so mannered that it becomes kind of vaudvillian.  One
> just doesn't find that in the recordings from about '74 to '82.  These
> interpretations seem much more balanced, with a greater emphasis on the
> performance needs inherent in the *music*.  These recordings also
> incorporate stereo analog tape with Dolby A-type noise reduction;
> arguably the best-sounding format on which GG recorded.
> 

I agree with the first half of this paragraph, especially about that
astonishing WTC1 Bb-minor prelude.  But I don't think his playing got any
less mannered from '74 to '82.  Can you give some examples wherein his
playing of anything doesn't sound mannered?  Offhand, the only examples I
can think of would be some of the Brahms intermezzi that he did early in
his career, and maybe some of his Schoenberg and Berg. 

> I've only listened to the live Saltzburg set a few times, but I'm pretty
> much ready to give this CD away to a good home.  I'd call it "Goldberg
> Lite".  I get the sense that he's playing through most of these pieces at
> "half-steam".  The dynamic contrasts are minimized, many of the pieces are
> mp to mf throughout and the predominant phrasing is legato or
> semi-detached.  It's a pleasant enough realization, but somewhat lacking
> in dynamic and other contrasts.  There are some pretty noticeable
> finger-slips, too, which may explain why GG didn't appove it for release
> during his lifetime;  no take-two-ness to work with there and certainly no
> ability to butt-splice sections of contrasting interpretations.  Gould
> had some nice things to say about this one (as a live performance) but it
> sounds a bit bland to me and has none of the carefully worked out
> inter-variational detail of the '81 set.
> 

Obviously I hear very different things in this performance than you do
(see my comments above); apparently it's therefore successful as an
artistic performance.  For me, this performance is the *most* dynamic, not
in terms of louder or softer, but in terms of variety of moods, variety
between repose and pushing ahead, variety between careful control and
ecstatic abandon.  That's what makes it interesting.  He's playing it as a
straightforward piece of music, a unified experience that has natural flow
to it. 

> The '81 set is undoubtedly the best sounding of the three recordings,
> although I have misgivings both about the instrument used and the rather
> astringent sound of this early digital recording.  The "sucker-punch"
> dynamic contrast between the Aria and first variation is certainly there
> and, yes, digital recordings are clean and quiet.  But that Yamaha piano
> is a real loser on tonal quality IMHO and certainly no substitute for
> CD318, even after it's various (and according to GG, unsuccessful) 
> surguries.

I agree, that Yamaha doesn't sound very good, in terms of sound.  And it's
miked too closely. 

> What the '81 recording *does* have, for me at least, is a flawless sense
> of what's right for the music.  Gone is the empty virtuosity of a young
> pianist trying to thrill the listener.  Gone is the need to amplify
> pianistic gestures to the 20th row orchestra seats.  In it's place are
> realizations that reflect a lifetime of performing and studying the
> *music* of Bach.  Gestures here highlight the internal archetecture of the
> individual variations and, more importantly, the work as a whole.  I don't
> find this version overly intellectual or lacking passion at all.  The
> passion here, however, springs from the music itself and not a desire to
> impress listeners with an external display of virtuoso pianism.

Glad it works for you.  As I said at the beginning of this too-long
posting, "mileage may vary." 

Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.44N+78.87W
bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/