RECORDS Stephen \X4dsworth Glittering Gould wenty-five years ago, CBS released odder, wearing coat, scarf, cap, and celebrates 25 years of Gould on disc Ta recording of Bach's Goldberg gloves in summer, never meeting the with four releases that travel from Variations played on the piano by press except by phone, avoiding planes Scarlatti to Scriabin to Gould himself, Glenn Gould, an eccentric young and pollution like the plague, still with the accent on Bach. Canadian. The critics said he'd made a sitting hunched on that ridiculous Pablo Casals wrote in his auto­ mechanical sequence expressive, ab­ chair, which hasn't been replaced or biography, "For the past eighty years 1 sorbing, and wholly interesting, and even altered an eighth of an inch in the have started each day in the same everyone loved it, especially a genera­ last 30 years. manner .... I go to the piano, and I tion of piano students whose daily Recordings were the voices of his play two preludes and fugues of Bach rigors were greatly eased by this vision silence, and they came hard and fast— It is a sort of benediction on the of a somehow passionate Bach. Yet this Byrd, Beethoven, Brahms, Bizet of all house." Gould's newest record. Bach: was certainly the cleanest, least roman­ people (Chopin and Liszt conspicuous­ Preludes, Fughettas and Fugues, is a tic Bach on records. ly absent), Schoenb'erg and Hindemith, benediction on the house. His playing Gould played against the piano in a among others, all subject to the whim, it has a sprightly exactitude just this side sense. Rather than exploiting its tradi­ seemed, of this musical Bobby Fischer. of crispness, the passage work criminal­ tional "pianistic" expressiveness, His technical facility was always aston- ly precise but exuberantly free, the Gould was straining to touch brisk and percussive hear the real Bach through An Historic Record Debut Re-Channeled for Stereo but loving, the tone bright the din of the 19th century, BACH but warm. with its new improved THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS He handles the instru­ piano sound, its larger- GLENN GOUm ment as if itweren'tapiano; than-life keyboards, its the dry sound and detache larger-than-life virtuosos flow suggest that it's a pounding on them, and its blood descendant of the Chopins and Liszts indulg­ clayier for which these ing in the new capabilities pieces were written. Gould of the instrument. Gould never allows this big mod­ discovered that in order to ern piano to resonate "pi- hear what he was listening for he had to ishing. So was Jiis chutzpah. He who anistically," and his rhythmic artic­ get away from the distractions of the had freely realized the figured bass in an ulation is lively and variegated concert circuit and, to a certain extent, introverted traversal of the Mozart C- —there are little catches in the line of life in the modern world. He retired at minor concerto (over-doing!) was now that grab you—so this ends up a more 32, thereafter performing only in recomposing Wagner in bold transcrip­ authentic performance than many rival recording studios. tions of the operatic orchestra music versions played unoriginally on origin­ He had always been a bit odd, (over-daring!). And if he wasn't in­ al instruments. wearing gloves and crumpled tails venting inner voices to animate the onstage, sitting hunched on a sawed- Siegfried Idyll, he was playing the rtur Schnabel, whom Gould has down, short-legged chair that looked Meistersinger prelude four-hands with .worshiped since childhood, be­ like a relic from a fire, stickingdoggedly himself (over-dubbing!). lieved that unlike Bach's or Mozart's, to his musical guns. Before a perfor­ But in all of his recordings he dares Beethoven's music was nearly all of mance in 1962, Leonard Bernstein, the listener to rehear the familiar, to equal greatness. The three sonatas of speaking to the audience, dissociated strip down preconceptions of how the Opus 2, dedicated to Haydn {Glenn himself and his orchestra from Gould's instrument "should" sound, or how Gould Plays Beethoven Sonatas), may experimental reading of the Brahms D- certain composers "should" sound on be less grand in design than some of minor concerto as an understated, it, and his technique and vision are Beethoven's later big-name sonatas, or nonvirtuoso piece. Left to his own abetted by an innovative approach to even Opus 28, also recorded here, but devices, Gould seemed to become even the recording process. CBS rightly they are unfailingly grand in concept. 94 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG SR December 1980 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED These performances are classically corded life and our listening. It's either free-for-alls to moving documentaries proportioned, but Gould is romantical­ the last straw or the icing on the cake: If on solitude, the North, Casals, Bach, ly aware of the opposites and contrasts Gould bothers you, youll loathe his and other subjects close to him. As pure in this music, and the silences have as humming; ifyou understand him, youll sound these are all tours de force, with much rhythmic absoluteness as the need it. Gould said of Schnabel that he voices mixed and matched and over­ audible sections. seemed not to care very much for the lapped in a musical way that conveys This is especially telling in the piano as an instrument, it was a means the essence of the subject as evocatively exquisite slow movements of Opus 2, to an end for him, "and the end was to as the words the voices are saying. which remind Gould of string quartets. approach Beethoven." Gould does The other record in this set, which Here, his greatest single gift as a exactly that on these records—he includes music by Scarlatti, C.P.E. Bach, Scriabin, and part of Liszt's transcription of Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, features a literally contra­ puntal arrangement of voices in Gould's own So You Want to Write a Fugue?—a delicious piece. There is also a fascinating performance of Richard Strauss's stark Ophelia Lieder with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, a fresh reading made fresher perhaps by the fact that it was virtually unrehearsed. None of the material on this album has been released previously, though it spans 17 years in the studio. All of the material on the last celebration record. The Little Bach Book, has been available before. It could have documented revealingly the development of Gould's Bach from those Goldbergs in 1955 to the new Preludes, Fughettas and Fugues record. Cuts from both are here. But the recording leaps back and forth over the years, from Dolby to pre-Dolby sound, so the listener gets every different style of Bach, also of Gould, also of recording, in random order. And it all smacks of "Greatest Hitsof...,"which Retired from the distractions of the modem world, Glenn Gould makes pure music. is of course antithetical to the Gould musician is on display—his intuitive approaches Beethoven, as if at home Gestalt. Better to buy the old Goldbergs grasp of the inner pulse in a piece of alone developing themes as he might and the new Bach record to see where music, the unswerving beat within it develop strands of conversation, spon­ Gould has gotten. that propels it through bar lines, cross- taneously, and, of course, talking back The Goldbergs had line and tender­ rhythms, and even idiosyncratic tempi. to them, egging them on with his own ness, but were still a touch soft-edged in Gould's adagios move simply and voice. The musician is making music, that dreaded "pianistic" way. Gould's inexorably and quite in spite of the fact and we are overhearing. obsession is with pure, absolute music that, again, he never lets the piano That voices are music to Gould is (instruments are irrelevant), and his resonate in the least grandly. He could proven on the two-record Glenn Gould growth is toward that ideal. He has be playing a Hammerklavier, though 25th Anniversary Album, one disc of journeyed to the center of the music as his Opus 28, parts of which are for him a which is devoted to a serious conversa­ he has come away from the nucleus of homage to Schnabel, is more round- tion in a humorous vein about Gould's the music world, where trend, tradition, toned and conventionally "pianistic" mannerisms. The speakers are imag­ and habit lead our ears into temptation. than his Opus 2. ined critics, the voices are his, the He's been cultivating solitude, plumb­ Gould's most notorious eccentricity, mixing is splendid. The format and ing its depths, and reaping its unearthly his humming, is very much part of these characters are familiar to Canadian musical rewards. • records and what makes them so fine. radio listeners. Gould has a distin­ Stephen Wadsworth, former managing editor of The close miking he insists on makes his guished record of original broadcasts Opera News, contributes articles to many sung contributions a fact of his re- for the CBC, from these zany critical musical publications here and abroad. SR December 1980 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG 95 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Saturday Review 198rDIARY The SATURDAY REVIEW desk diary, an invaluable for the business traveler, an encyclopedic reference aid for people on the go, is now available for 1981. section including world maps, hotels, restaurants, Handsome black library padded covers, and pages airports, and principle attractions of the 30 largest wide enough to include details of all your appoint­ U.S. cities. This section also contains helpful ments, the SATURDAY REVIEW diary is beauti­ information such as the vital statistics of the U.S., fully designed and extremely practical.