Re: The Yamaha recordings

["Anne M. Marble" <amarble@sff.net>]

From: Jim Morrison <jim_morrison@SPRYNET.COM>
> <big snip>
> So what I'm trying to say is that regardless of Friedrich's entertaining
> story about Gould walking the streets of New York looking for a new piano
> to record the 81 Goldbergs, I think he had already used a Yamaha
> (probably the same Yamaha) on the Haydn discs, which were
> recorded earlier than the Goldbergs.
>
> I'm not saying Gould didn't find that Goldberg Yamaha the way Friedrich
> says it happened.  All evidence I've found points to his having done it
> that way.

I hope it happened that way. I _love_ the story of Glenn Gould trying out
piano after piano in the store -- with the windows draped, of course. And
then finally finding a battered Yamaha that he fell in love with. It's like
something out of a fairy tale. You know, the part where the prince is kind
to the old hag, and she turns out to be the princess in disguise. Or like
the part of the Indiana Jones movie where Indy picks the right chalice (the
plain chalice) because that's what the son of a carpenter would have used.

Too bad Glenn Gould didn't write about discovering the Yamaha in his
Arthur Rubinstein tone...

"I gazed at CD 318, heartbroken. It was time to say farewell. Yet surely no
one would ever replace her. ... Several hours later, at the Yamaha store,
the proprietor tried to interest me in several new models. They were fresh
and shiny, full of the joy of youth. Yet none of them fascinated me. I was
distraught, disconsolate. And then, in a darkened back corridor of the
store, I saw her. A battered, abused soul. A used Yamaha. She reminded me
of my first love, the Chickerling. The staff tried to dissuade me. But I
recognized the passions. I was giddy with love again." :->

> Ostwald says of the used Yamaha "He liked it so much that he immediately
> bought it and ordered it shipped to the Columbia studio for his Goldberg
> Variations."
>
> Robert Silverman, on page 146 of Glenn Gould Variations, claims he was
> the man that told Gould to go to that shop and "Later [Gould] recorded
> most of the new Goldberg and the Haydn sonatas on the Yamaha."

Well, as long as I can imagine the sounds of Glenn Gould trying out pianos
in a closed shop with draped windows... (If only that had happened when I
visited New York City. <sniff!>)

------
Anne M. Marble
amarble@sff.net
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