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Re[2]: GGs of today, GG's Haendel
Keith Jarrett seems to have released (recently?) a recoring of the Handel
suites: has anyone listened to them? While live recordings don't normally bother
me I feel the Richter/Gavrillov recordings suffer from it.
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Subject: Re: GGs of today, GG's Haendel
Author: Marcos Maffei <mmaffei@mandic.com.br> at INTERNET
Date: 11/6/98 21:04
GG's Haendel's suites
I wondered... is there anyone else, besides me, that really enjoys that
one?
When I bought it, I easily dismissed it in one careless hearing (not
surprisingly: it was around the same time that I bought the already
mentioned Art of Fugue and the Bach-C.P.E.-Scarlatti GG's records). Then,
one day, I picked it just to see what it sounded, after all. To my
surprise, I enjoyed it enormously, or to put it more to the point: had
lots of fun with it. Here's my opinion: GG couldn't quite manage to take
seriously Haendel's Suites (quite understandably: there is some beatiful
music in them, but, compared to Bach's keyboard contrapuntual and
emotional depths and altitudes...)
so he approached them ...as child's play. What else can explain his
rather arbitrary choices and changes of registration, for instance,
particularly in the set of variations of the Suite in D minor HWV 428?
Only the fervent ingenuousness of a whiz-kid at play... And, of course,
he seems to be mightily enjoying himself all along the suites, and all
this sheer joy is there for us to share... in other words, he has lots
of fun, and so do we.
(The letter quoted in the booklet may serve as evidence of my "theory";
and, while I'm at it, what is a Wittmayer, this harpsichord "that many
pro-harpsychordists turn up their noses at"?)
Well, I guess that all I said makes of this record not much more than a
trifle, even if a highly enjoyable one, but so what? Unless if you have
something against just having fun... (oh, you can always go back to much
more sublime music as in the Byrd-Gibbons-Sweelinck record, another of
my favorite GG's; and if you want Haendel played seriously, you can try
Sviatoslav Richter in the very fairly priced EMI doublefforte
series...)