Re: GG-Shostakovich Quintet

["Robert Kunath" <kunath@hilltop.ic.edu>]

Hello, John--

	I was just browsing in Otto Friedrich's biography last night, where (p.
165) he identifies the Symphonia Quartet as consisting of four members of
The Cleveland Orchestra.  He also says that the group had given the
American premiere of the work the year before they recorded it, so I
suspect they were at least attempting to be a recognized quartet.

	I don't know of any comments by Gould about the quintet, but, on the whole
I don't find his comments about Shostakovich very illuminating.  I have the
sense that he had absorbed the modernist perspective that largely dismissed
Shostokovich as hopelessly retrograde.  A pity--I'd give a lot to hear a
recording of Gould doing the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues.

Robert

----------
> From: john burke <john.burke@mindspring.com>
> To: Glenn Gould List <f_minor@email.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: GG-Shostakovich Quintet
> Date: Saturday, February 12, 2000 3:24 PM
> 
> Hi all--
> 
> I'm new to this list so I don't know if this topic has been discussed.
> 
> I'm a pianist, currently preparing the Shostakovich Piano Quintet;
learning
> that GG had performed this piece, I got the videotape. (It's Movements 1,
2,
> and 5, omitting 3 and 4.)
> 
> Questions: who are the "Symphonia Quartet"? (Was that a polite euphemism
for
> "pickup group"?) Did Gould ever write or speak about this piece, and his
> interpretation of it--*highly* unconventional in the Preludium, with
tempo
> irregularities, rolled chords etc.--or have others commented on it?
> 
> Thanks,
> -- 
> jvb
>