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GG( Long): Review of Ostwald book
This review appears in today's Washington Post and can be found at
www.washingtonpost.com.
The Gould Variations
By Ted Libbey
Sunday, September 14, 1997; Page X01
The Washington Post
GLENN GOULD
The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius
By Peter F. Ostwald
Norton. 368 pp. $29.95
PICTURE a musical artist so extraordinarily
gifted, and so different from any who had
gone before him, that in a performing career
lasting less than a decade he could come to
be regarded as a legend. Picture one so
fascinating -- in his interests as well as
his foibles -- so troubled, self-absorbed,
self-destructive and, above all, so oddly
cryptic in his dealings with the rest of the
world that in the decade and a half since his
death he could inspire more people to write
about him than any other musician of his
generation save one: Elvis Presley. Picture
all of that and you begin to see why Glenn
Gould, the Canadian pianist who retired from
concertizing in 1964, at the age of 31, and
died a recluse in 1982, lives on like Elvis
in the hearts and minds of many music lovers.
The latest book to come our way on the
subject, Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy
of Genius, is also, sadly, the last book that
will ever come from the pen of Peter Ostwald,
who died in 1996 shortly after completing it.
Ostwald was a thoroughly competent violinist
according to a colleague of mine who actually
played with him, but his vocation was
medicine, specifically psychiatry. Born in
Berlin, trained in New York, he later became
the founder and director of the Health
Program for Performing Artists at the
University of California. As a musically
literate member of the medical profession, of
which there are many, Ostwald had a
particular interest in the intersection of --
I hesitate to say connection between --
neurosis and creativity or artistic
accomplishment. Prior to writing this
psychobiography of Gould, he had produced an
important study of Robert Schumann, entitled
Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical
Genius, as well as a biographical portrait of
Vaslav Nijinsky.
The new book marks a major advance in our
understanding of one of the 20th century's
most significant performing artists. Its
underlying thesis is that what made Gould a
great pianist -- an exceptionally strong
mother-son bond formed at the piano and
expressed through music -- was also what made
him a psychic cripple for his entire life,
incapable of dealing with emotion outside the
realm of music, unable to form close personal
relationships, anxious, afraid -- of crowds,
travel, germs, anger -- obsessively,
hypochondriacally concerned with symptoms of
disease, and constantly in need of
controlling his immediate physical
environment.
As such, what was clearly meant to be a
volume celebrating the pianist's genius and
uniqueness contains, as part of its message
and in spite of Ostwald's evident devotion to
him, a serious and ultimately saddening
critique of Gould's personality. One of
Gould's worst features was his habit of
discarding friends and acquaintances when
they challenged him or ceased to be of
practical use to him. Ostwald belonged to
that group, but there is not a shred of
vindictiveness here. What seems to have
bothered Ostwald most -- not surprisingly, in
view of his professional bias -- was Gould's
refusal to seek psychiatric counseling at any
time in his life, although on several
occasions reported by Ostwald he was subtly
encouraged to do so.
Ostwald's account of Gould's life introduces
many new elements to the picture. It
incorporates firsthand reminiscences from
family, friends and colleagues, as well as
documentary information not previously
unearthed. It also offers a number of telling
insights into Gould's psychological makeup
that help us understand the artist as well as
the man. The opening chapters, in which
Ostwald recalls his first meeting with Gould,
and the closing one, a gripping account of
Gould's final week of life, are particularly
fine. In them, Ostwald is as engrossing a
writer as any who has tried his hand at
biography. About their meeting Ostwald writes
that Gould "obviously loved to talk and to
hear himself talk -- a brilliant monologue
about orchestras he had played with,
conductors he liked, his favorite composers,
all delivered in densely constructed
sentences with numerous imbedded clauses.
Words flowed out of him with unabashed
vitality, making it difficult to interrupt.
Not that one would want to stop a musician
who possessed such a razor-sharp intellect
and spun out words as delectably as he played
music."
But much in the middle of the book -- devoted
to Gould's childhood and adolescence, his
astonishingly brief career as a concert
artist and the years after his "retirement"
when he was involved in radio work for the
Canadian Broadcasting Company -- is not so
good. Ostwald's voice disappears into a
procession of unedited or barely edited
transcripts of interviews and conversations,
which tend to sound alike after a while and
rarely penetrate to the depths he has shown
us he's capable of reaching. The narrative
becomes choppy, and our sense of being in
personal contact with the subject is lost.
Admittedly, Ostwald is being more honest than
most biographers. Since he did not know Gould
during much of this time -- indeed, nobody
really knew Gould, at any time -- he can be
forgiven for stepping back and writing less
personally, more clinically.
In the end, the Glenn Gould who will be
known, the only one who can be known, is the
pianist of the recordings made between 1955
and 1980. His is the presence behind those
remarkable accounts of the Brahms intermezzi,
which Gould himself described as "sexy" and
which I find almost unbearably depressing. He
is the thinker behind those anti-heroic
readings of the Beethoven sonatas, the spirit
within some of the most illuminating and
controversial Bach ever played. Ever the
narcissist, Gould found his perfect companion
in the piano -- it said only what he wanted
it to say and never spoke back. Ultimately,
as Ostwald undoubtedly knew, it is the same
piano that will be Gould's most sympathetic
biographer.
Ted Libbey is a commentator for National
Public Radio and author of "The NPR Guide to
Building a Classical CD Collection."
A SELECT GLENN GOULD DISCOGRAPHY
*Bach, "Goldberg Variations" [recorded 1955].
Sony Classical SMK 52594 [mono]
*Bach, "The Well-tempered Clavier, Book I."
Sony Classical SM2K 52600 [2CDs]
*Beethoven, "Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat,
Op. 73" ("Emperor"). Toronto Symphony
Orchestra/Karel Ancerl, cond. Sony Classical
SMK 52687 [w. Strauss: Burleske]
*Brahms, "Late Piano Pieces" [10 Intermezzi
from Op. 76 and Opp. 116-118, recorded 1960].
Sony Classical SM2K 52651 [2 CDs; w.
Ballades, Op. 10 and Rhapsodies, Op. 79]
*Schoenberg, "Piano Works." Sony Classical
SM2K 52664 [2 CDs]
-- Ted Libbey
A SELECT GLENN GOULD DISCOGRAPHY
*Bach, "Goldberg Variations" [recorded 1955].
Sony Classical SMK 52594 [mono]
*Bach, "The Well-tempered Clavier, Book I."
Sony Classical SM2K 52600 [2CDs]
*Beethoven, "Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat,
Op. 73" ("Emperor"). Toronto Symphony
Orchestra/Karel Ancerl, cond. Sony Classical
SMK 52687 [w. Strauss: Burleske]
*Brahms, "Late Piano Pieces" [10 Intermezzi
from Op. 76 and Opp. 116-118, recorded 1960].
Sony Classical SM2K 52651 [2 CDs; w.
Ballades, Op. 10 and Rhapsodies, Op. 79]
*Schoenberg, "Piano Works." Sony Classical
SM2K 52664 [2 CDs]
-- Ted Libbey
c Copyright 1997 The Washington Post
Company
Kris Shapar
____________________________________________________________________
To doubt everything or to believe everything
are two equally convenient solutions; both
dispense with the necessity of reflection.
- Jules Henri Poincare
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