GG Posture

[Anne Smith <smithqa@nexicom.net>]

From: Tim Conway :

> I know GG had an unusual posture at the piano, but do you know how it
> prevented him from playing Romantic music, er, "properly", for want of a
> better word?

>From page 40 and 41  of "The Art of Glenn Gould" edited by John Roberts:
An interview with Dennis Braithwaite published in the Entertainment section
of the Toronto Daily Star on March 28, 1959:
B. "Speaking of Tchaikovsky, why is it you don't care to play the so-called
Romantic composers as much as you do Bach and Beethoven, or Schoenberg?"
GG ".............Now, there is another reason that I have rejected certain
music and that is that, physically speaking, I sit very low at the piano and
while I think this position is advantageous for most things, there is one
thing it makes one lack and that is a real fortissimo, and one needs a real
fortissimo to play Tchaikovsky.  In that position you just can't get it."

Anne