GG/KJ

["Ayako Hosono" <ayakoho@spacelab.net>]

When I listened to Keith Jarrett after listening to GG.

Sometimes comparing two interpretations makes you notice about things
you thought you wouldn't notice.

It was when I was discovering GG's music one after another, including
WTC.  Then one day I had an opportunity to listen to Keith Jarrett
playing Bach in a car.  I listened to it for a while and a friend asked
me what i thought about it, so here is what I thought.

I noticed that he was trying to do what GG was doinghaving control over
many voices and giving them an individuality.  So that was same like
GG.  As I kept listening, though, something was missing in his
performance that GG had in his musica drama.  GG's music is sometimes
accused of being mechanical or cold or lifeless, but when I heard KJ's
performance, it was completely devoid of drama and quite superficial. 
GG had an amazing ability to give an individual life to each voice in
music, particularly in fugues, and it was to the extent that each voice
started to have something organic, appearing as a character in a drama. 
In this case GG was like a stage director, telling each actor what to
do, where to stand on stage, how to speak in what volume _ he was quite
theatrical, in a way. It could be also that each voice already had a
charater as it was composed; GG simply listened to what each acter had
to say, absorbed them, and transformed inside of him which came out as
something quite unique.  And he was open to every character's opinion
about his or her presentation.

As every drama has a story _ beginning of a story, conflict in the
middle, and somehow resolving this conflict in the end _ his fugues has
this quality of drama, of life.

I would not have noticed this quality if I didn't listen to KJ's WTC.

10 Feb 98