I sent Seymour Bernstein this video and asked if he could write me an email defending his Gould opinions, since many of you wished he'd said more here. Instead he insisted we jump on a Zoom call, giving me the chance to record his instant reactions to a couple Gould recordings as well as have him respond to some of the criticisms you threw his way! Part 1 is here: th-cam.com/video/0cB5ewhjf1E/w-d-xo.html And part 2 is coming in a few days. Stay tuned! Meanwhile, thanks for the lively debate.
I just issued an appeal and restored it. It was the same erroneous claim on the BBC interview clip that led to this video being temporarily blocked. It seems clear to me that these are classic examples of fair use for the purposes of commentary, but automated Content ID sensors don't know the difference.
My Dad is buried in the same cemetery as Gould; about a 10 minute walk from his plot. Every time I pay my Dad a visit I make sure to stop by Glenn’s place to say hi. My Dad turned me on to Glenn Gould as a child and it’s fitting they’d end up as neighbours.
I had a chance to visit a movie set in his old apartment on St. Clair ( 2010 or so). The entryway we used led us into the kitchen, which featured twin stoves/ovens that looked like they'd been there since the 30's, sitting side by side. Memorable:)
@@giovanna722 I made a pilgrimage to Wawa last year. Stayed in Room 101. Unfortunately none of the staff I encountered at the Wawa Motor Inn knew about their famous former regular visitor. The really sad part was that with the exception of one person no one took much interest. There was a plaque in a room celebrating Signourey Weavers’ one time visit while making a film up there. Nothing for Glenn ! There is an odd life size poster of Gould at the waterfall but that was it. It is an amazing spot and I certainly can appreciate why Gould visited it many times !
I actually know quite a lot of people, both professional musicians and music lovers, who didn't or don't like Gould's playing (me included, I'm from Leipzig and have a very different opinion of how Bach should sound than Gould had). He was in a class of his own. Genius? I don't know.... certainly gifted, but to me cold, distanced and boring. And a lot of his huge fame was driven by very good advertisement.
I'm Canadian, born in 1952, heard him lots many years ago, and should have thought he was great. But I didn't and still don't. All the splicing and humming, and the flow of the music itself isn't there. More of a mechanic than anything else.
@@glenngouldification He certainly isn’t boring, but I know for certain that JS Bach and Mozart are both in hell. How do I know? Their eternal torment is knowing what Glenn Gould did to their music.
@@LukeShalz Yeah, but they are geniuses whose music is played and revered years after their deaths. Your torment will be screaming stupid music reviews in hell while no one listens, long forgotten. Long live Gould !
@@geometricart7851Moisturize and wash your hands regularly, it really isn't that hard 😂 my dad has picked rock for the last 40 years and you wouldn't know it by his hands
One of my favourite comments about Gould is that it is often like listening to an X-ray of the music--as though you can see inside the composition to discover its inner workings. But I can certainly understand that this can be a love-it-or-hate-it proposition.
That "X-ray of the music" is exactly how I feel about Gould's utterly breathtaking performance of Ravel's La Valse (which he recorded for his Show on the CBC)! If you've never heard this absolutely thrilling and singular interpretation, you can easily find it on TH-cam, it's most definitely worth a listen (if not indeed a lifetime of listenings)!
It's like an x ray that shows broken bones and brain cancer on a genetically modified alien. I take it you enjoy listening to a madman mumble and hum and sing out of tune as he ruins EVERY single performance with his neurotic interpretations that often completely ignore the markings on the score and is an affront to tasteful, beautiful music. Personally, I want a good, CLEAN recording. Since Gould NEVER SHUT UP, he NEVER PRODUCED ONE.
Exactly that! I didnt know how to put it but that s what I heard when I heard him playing first on a cd. It was so mind blasting that I had to recover for a couple of weeks
Mozart it's Lilly Krauss also Clara Haskil ; all Adagios of Sonatas- Concertos- quartets by Clara Haskil are above the keyboard with a magicelancoly not G Gould the nose in the Key-board
😂 like he rewrote Mozart's works and destroyed the originals! But it's true that Mozart is way overrated like Einstein was, there are people for whom it becomes fashionably trendy to exaggerate their brilliance, and when that trend makes it into culture, it becomes almost universally accepted without question, without reexamining whether there's any validity in it. It becomes almost heresy to even pose the question! This is the sheeple-ness of humans.
@Dark One Mozart is hugely overrated, his early genius did not transform itself into genius of composition in adulthood sadly, and Gould noticed that, but if you point out that Mozart was crap, you get all these angry sheeple coming at you!😂
@Xavier X But you fall into a worse category. Do you ever question whether you are even remotely qualified to opine that Mozart and Einstein are overrated? The category you put yourself in is the poseur who loves say things like "Oh, that Pavarotti, he couldn't hit a high C if his life depended on it." Most people are polite and simply roll their eyes at you. I doubt you notice.
@@bill9989 no, I studied general relativity in University, GR is pretty basic compared to material even from Einstein's own contemporaries. As I mentioned in a previous comment, to point out the fact certain talents are exaggerated by popular culture, like those of Einstein, Mozart and Pavarotti the one trick pony, is to commit blasphemy, the proof is in your angry response🧐 I do not need a degree in music to have an ear for distinguishing between masterpieces and mediocrity, unlike the majority of sheeple who rely on the safety of the usual select names that popular culture grants "genius" status to, deserved or not. Yes Mozart and Einstein were brilliant, but no better than, and in some cases no match for, many unsung others in their fields, some of whom are rather more deserving of recognition. 😡
02:30 I don't turn to Gould for beautiful renditions. But I've not once listened to him and thought and felt nothing. Every single time I hear him play something, I'm filled with thoughts and feelings. I don't feel the desire to emulate, but I am most definitely inspired.
He inspires me to NOT SING AND MUMBLE when I play. Though, I have never developed that bad habit, as his early teacher instructed him to do, and a bad habit which he NEVER BROKE.
@@allenapplewhite i think you re too much fixed on the singing. When you can hear past that, you can hear many fantastical things. But everybody his or her own opinion of course
I am a piano student and this is one of my favorite videos of all time on YT. Sensational interviews intertwined with the footage of Gould. Just amazing
@@allenapplewhite You are a piano teacher who cannot stand Gould ? OMG, thanks for this. I have alerted Sony and Columbia to recall all Gould recordings. The Gould Foundation has been alerted and agreed to cease all operations. You have done musicians everywhere a great service. Now get back to teaching piano to as few students as possible so as to do the least damage. Long live Gould !
@@glenngouldification Gould is dead. In fact, allow me to twist what Gould said about MOZART back around on GOULD: "The only tragic thing about Goulds death...was that he didnt die S O O N E R." Not only was Gould a narcissistic antagonistic opinionated @$$HOLE and $#!tty human being and homewrecker, but he played with terrible posture that gave him severe back tension and problems, refused to play a concert if the stupid footstool he sat on didnt show up to the concert hall like a spoiled little man-child, IGNORED the markings on the page by the composer and made such drastic changes as to be considered a NEW ARRANGEMENT instead of an "interpretation," lacked the emotional and intellectual complexity to appreciate a genius like Mozart while simultaneously thinking that HE was somehow more of a genius even while he demonstrated by his soulless butchering of Mozart's music that he had absolutely NO IDEA how to play his music (you heard him play Mozart in the video above, RIGHT? I would rather listen to nails on a chalkboard, his Mozart is SO UNMUSICAL), to his petty stupid narcissistic habits and attention grabbing like wearing thick gloves all the time to protect his fingers like a the fragile little wussy man he was, he played slow pieces fast and fast pieces slow just because he INSISTED on choosing the wrong tempo and IGNORING the markings on the SCORE, not to mention his biggest sin OF ALL: turning every piano SOLO piece he EVER PLAYED into a dissonant and cacophonic VOCAL DUET where he sang and mumbled and hummed OUT OF TUNE to himself like a friggen CRAZY PERSON. You may like $#!TTY recordings where the performer lacks the self control to SHUT HIS OWN MOUTH and ruin every piece he ever played in his life, but I personally think that a performer that ruins EVERY performance BY CHOICE is a BAD PERFORMER. You can polish a turd all you want. It is still a piece of $#!T. Gould is the most OVERRATED pianist in ALL OF HISTORY. I feel sorry for you.
I first heard Gould play Bach’s Goldberg Aria, and it inspired me to learn it. I bought a Roland HP Digital Piano (apologies to the far superior natural analog pianos, and to Mr Gould too), however, I love it. I gave myself 5 years to learn it….it seemed like an eternity; I wrote at the top of the score ‘learn to play it, the time will pass anyway’. It has, and I can play it. Life achievement tick. Next I must attend The Grand Canyon Star Party.
No need to apologize. Glenn Gould played on a modern piano. Wendy Carlos is a master on the Moog. The true test is, simply is your version beautiful, and do you enjoy playing it?
the "Glenn Gould problem" is simple: he is like the great philosophers, he takes something and shows it to us in another light, a light that perhaps deforms the thing but which makes it appear "beautiful" anyway. Gould was interested in the creative moment of the composition and not in the interpretative or "musical" moment. Time gives and will prove him right, indeed today he is an universal symbol of freedom and ispiration in art.
thanks you have pointed that out, although, much of the task for pianists is to get the idea, the construction and the elements behind that special music piece! Glenn Gould, as good as he seems is just an egomaniac and have found lots of followers!
@matteo r. You're kidding, yes? To me Gould is proto-typical of a selfish pianist. More concerned with his own originality than the music's intent. There are some pianists like that in each generation, and I generally don't like their playing. It doesn't look like high-art or philosophy to me, it just looks arrogant. If he wanted to make statements on music like you are saying, he should have composed, not played.
very good insightul point..."PIANISTS" and their thinking is also another factor...they like to think in terms of "beauty" according to what our instrument allows...forgetting that as soon as it is "piano" that is no longer EVEN as bach heard it actually "interpreted"...2) they miss altogether that BACH HIMSELF varied his OWN "interpretations" in the reworkings of his compositions...and allowed this or that to be "interpreted" in DIFFERENT instruments...the SLURS and phrasings BY A VOICE CARRYING WORDS...could be different from the "lines" of an oboist..a flutist...a pianist...BACH...on record responded to someone asking HIM how he could PLAY so well: "IT is simple ..play the right notes at the right time" ...and specific instance he WROTE down slurs or dots to indicate a particular thing he obviously felt should be ......what are we to say then ...how he might have handled the REST of the lines? the ART OF FUGUE...was clearly intended with TWO HANDS in mind...that is so easy to note..but arrives at the later MASSIVE MIRROR FUGUES which required FOUR hands..of crisscrossing double counterpoints...even up to eight voices!! there are no indications of tempo...dynamics...or even phrasing...they could be sung by a quartet...soprano..tenor , alto. bass...as the OPEN CLEFS indicate if anyone happens to be fluent in open score andplayed these with 2 hands at the piano...that s where one..as i used to do regularly...senses..."why...bach leaves it to me to combine the touches and articulations as physically possible and the ears find clear...and create individual VOICE characters like four people talking at once...but intelligible>" that s what GLENN GOULD does...to his great credit... more "proof" that bach REINTERPRETED his OWN works: there are PLENTY of ORGAN pieces...part of a huge project he made of KEYBOARD works of which the golberg...the partitas are just part of...which in organ volumes bach REWORKED his "tunes" of the CHORALES...and therefore by additions of new polyphony ...and entirely new compositions....the CHORALE TUNES themselves were...."distorted" in note values..in tempo...etc...i suspect...mostpianists talk the way tey do..."interpretation" from the mastery of the piano..without much exploring how bach.s mind transfered itself...many times...from ONE genre of musical structure..to another...and from ONE medium to another... for example: THE GIGANTIC OVERTURE and its paired 3 section giant fugue...in E FLAT MAJOR...on the tune used in his "CANTATA" suite...MAGNIFICAT...from IT a tune is used in the ORGAN fugue....that s a RE INTERPRETATION as a new composition for ORGAN by itself...pianists...before tehy talk nonsense about "pianists interpreting bach" should at least play at the organ..some of bach.s CHORALES at the organ..as HE HIMSELF reworked...... GOULD was very early an ORGANIST as a boy..in his church..that says a lot about why he plays AT THE PIANO the way he did...the mind delves into the mind of bach...and as composer...who happens to love playing the piano for ITS own potentials...why do people have such problems with that...like this "PROFESSOR" BERNSTEIN...? they are like dogs who can t walk on hind legs like humans...barking and barking..."that s not how to BARK...woof woof"...how silly... just enjoy and learn and see what gould as to offer...and it s MORE than many great "PIANISTS" and professors of "bach interpretation" can show!!
As a music lover, it is a complete joy listening to different interpretations, different artists playing or singing the same piece. I love it because it alerts me to the sensitive core of it all, to a nuance, another texture that is surprising, a cadence emphasized, something bolder, softer, warmer or technically astonishing. Isn't that the reason for it all? And of course you will have your favourites, your own filters and preferences. That closes the circle.
You have described what I think too. Gould had a somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation, I always wonder what would Bach have thought about Gould. I like to think he would have been thrilled at the _non plus ultra_ clear delineation of melody and counterpoint, but maybe just a little concerned about its smaller emotion? Thanks for the comment!
@@NinoNiemanThe1st It would be interesting to know !! I think Gould had emotion but it was woven into the layers of whatever else his mind was concerned with.... a more private sensibility, that's for sure! :)
@@chickadddee Very accurate observation! I love my Gould interpretations, but yes they are very private to his autistic mind, but fantastic nonetheless, we may never hear the counterpoint drawn out to this extent again: it could get a bit clinical, but it does expose an aspect of Bach in these Gould recordings I think. I love all the recordings of Bach, they each show something different about his genius!
@@NinoNiemanThe1st No proof he was autistic of course, but his precision always provides me with a kind of calm comfort. Everything clicking into place you might say. So different from Murray Perahia who I also love. One drains away stress caused by chaos, the other, full of emotion, also eases stress - caused by greed and ignorance.
One thing Gould does better than almost anyone is clearly delineating the voices in a polyphonic texture. In Bach’s fugues you can hear clearly each iteration of the subject even when it is obscured by a lot of activity in the other voices. But when he plays from the Well Tempered Clavier, he often sounds like he’s in a hurry to reach the final cadence. The fugue ends as abruptly as it started leaving the listener wondering what all those notes were in the middle.
Here it is 40 years since Glenn Gould died, and we still listen, watch. Love. Are fascinated. Hear new things in the music. I'm so grateful that after he left the concert stage, he made so many recordings and TV programs--we have much to enjoy, to love, to enjoy.
here is 70 years since Cortot, Lipatti, Hoffman, Gieseking, and so many others died and we still listen to them. They were far better than some guy who thought he would be more important than music itself.
Except there were far better pianists who didn't ruin every take by mumbling over every recording or during every live performance. Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations is basically the ONLY classical CD I have thrown into the DONATE BIN, and I feel sorry for the person who may have bought it. One of my greatest regrets in life: I wish I had thrown it away instead.
@@druntopronto7598 Stupid nonsensical observation, check out the numbers Einstein ! Gould is way in the lead, more famous everyday as they slip from memory. Fortunately you have already slipped into obscurity !
I’ll never understand the Mozart-bashing unless he was just being contrary, or trolling. Glenn Gould was an amazing pianist but he was hardly Mozart. I went to piano school with someone very gifted who also didn’t think much of Mozart! Thankfully they’re in the minority. I love Mozart’s music so deeply that I almost take it as a personal insult! But I’m not Mozart, so I should just take it all with a grain of salt. 😂
@@beckylink I think that Gould was being a provocateur, although Mozart's greatest compositions were not for the pianoforte--which was a rather limited instrument in his day anyway. The piano concertos are superior works by virtue of his talent as an orchestrator. I quite like several of the sonatas, but they are more pretty than profound. The tragedy of Mozart is that he died just as he was entering his prime. If Beethoven and Bach had died at 36, most of their greatest works would never have been written! Comparing the output of all composers up to the age of 36, I think that there is a decent argument that Mozart's oeuvre is the most impressive.
@@beckylink when Gould bashed Mozart I thought he did it for the shock effect. Mozart was an innovator in his day. I agree with you, his music is profound and affects me deeply.
@@JohnSmith-oe5kx his concerti are innovative and masterpieces in my opinion. Not just the orchestration, but the ideas are much more developed than other classical composers of the time.
the tempo at which he plays is preposterous and downright offensive to the piece. just listen to pierre hantai or evgeni koroliov for superior interpretations.
I'm grateful that Glenn Gould was in this world. He was a wonderful character, and I love to hear him talk about whatever he was moved to talk about. And I always sense his utter and complete immersion in whatever he played. He was also a great "eccentric," of course, but that only added to his charms. And there was the fascination of "the two Bachs" in his hands. He could play Bach like a typewriter gone made in an Invention, and then turn around and play the opening Toccata from the 6th Partita in a richly sensitive way. And then there is the moving portrait of Gould "conducting himself" as he played the Beethoven Bagatelle Op. 126 No. 3, played with the deepest expression. Then there was the "iconoclast" who said the "Appassionata" Sonata was "just Beethoven being Beethoven" and seemed to want to turn Mozart into Bach in his recordings of the former. In short, a many-sided and somewhat unpredictable person and musician. But there is so much to love in the story of his life, his unique personal qualities, his thoughtful meditations, and in his deeply felt recordings of the music that he chose to record. Thank you for sharing these mini interviews of pianists on Glenn Gould--I enjoyed them!
Bravo MarkPorter! As a composer I think the same. Reflexive, intriguing, inspirative and wide open statements.Bravo to all ! Bach by the extraordinary, unique Glenn Gould : “United superbly by God, that ressonates and spreads this sublime music over all Universe. An infinite fited, adequated, stage for them. ! Luminous and vast.! And the galaxies and stars fully absorved by both reverentily brigthens more and more. With grace, plentiness, ressonance and gratitude, in reverence, imensity and communion." >>> .ARS SEMPER.VITA PLENA.HIC VIVIT FELICITATEM Gratias tibi tam Gould! ― Yan Ayrton, classical composer. I//////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Itaque Vita Aeternum
@@yanayrton It is interesting that both Bach and Glenn Gould could both be extremely "cerebral" in one work but then deeply "romantic" in another work. Nobody expected the voluptuous sound that Gould realized in his Brahms album, for one example. With Bach, I have a hard time getting into his more cerebral fugues, great and perfect as they no doubt are. The Bach that most amazes me is the stunning beauty of the Largo of the Concerto for Two Violins in D minor. There is the Bach of The Art of the Fugue, and then there is the Bach of that Concerto. That seems hard to reconcile beyond the fact that Bach's compositions seem to be perfectly put together, regardless of the genre and instrumentation. In conclusion, quite a guy! As for Glenn Gould, well, gosh, how can anyone dislike him? I guess his "iconoclastic" side could be off-putting, and he did go to the strange trouble of recording some music that he claimed to dislike. (Maybe record companies were pressuring him for his take on the "Appassionata," etc.?) But when we see Gould at the piano, what is most striking--to me, anyway--is his utter absorption in the music. So much so that he wasn't self-conscious about humming along when the mood struck him, or "conducting" himself at various moments. That seemed to be simply a sincere expression of his involvement with the music he was playing. I'm not sure anyone could "get away with" that these days--people might say, oh, how pretentious, and what a ridiculous circus those actions are, etc. But Glenn Gould was in the uniquely fortunate position of being "given license" to do his thing as he saw fit and be paid by record companies in the bargain. He was able to live in his own world in a way that is maybe not so readily available these days. He was "the eccentric genius," and that label gave him the license to "follow his muse(s)" as he saw fit. On the whole, I would like to have been his friend and been able to sit around and hear his thoughts on anything and, of course, to hear him at the piano. Or even play his beloved "20 Questions"! By the way, I wish you all the best in your compositional work. It must be a great joy to be a composer. I can only imagine!
@@yanayrton I'm hardly a connoisseur of the music of Bach! I know only a fraction of his music. But I have found much to love in the music by Bach that I've gotten to know. I guess some of the first Bach I ever heard was overhearing my dad play part of the G Major French Suite, and I came to love that Suite, in particular its opening and closing movements. I first heard part of the slow movement of the Concerto For Two Violins in D minor thanks to a movie featuring the late William Hurt called "Children of a Lesser God." There's a touching scene in the film in which Hurt tries to convey to a deaf woman through gestures the glorious beauty of that movement, and we see how painful it is for him not to be able to share that music meaningfully and deeply. Bach's Inventions were at home, though I don't recall ever hearing my dad play one of them. Thanks to my University of Iowa piano teacher (Dr. Gregory Pepetone, a marvelous pianist but unfortunately too shy to share his work here), I got to know and love Bach's "Italian Concerto" and the 4th Partita, as well as the Toccata in E minor--the latter of which I "gamely" attempted to master but fell short (as usual). I have gotten to know and love much of the Goldberg Variations over the years as well--though I leave the playing of them to real pianists. But that only leaves about five zillion other compositions by Bach that I'll probably never get around to hearing! Still, it's wonderful to know that Master Bach is always there, much beauty and abundant perfection always there to be encountered and appreciated. I will try to listen to your "Verknupfungen!" composition. Please forgive me for not being able to focus on it for awhile. But thank you for letting me know of it and your other work as well! All the best to you!
I can't think of a non-composer who has ever attracted as much discussion in classical music. Polarising, true, but the North pole has a lot more people around it than the South. Visionary. Genius. Virtuoso. Master. And of an importance transcendent of simple craft.
As a painter, I would add the thought that we can paint a picture over the space of decades, making corrections and changes. and what the viewer sees is yhevlast hour or hour and a half of work. so the "editing" of musical performances to reach an ideal of interpretation makes perfect sense.
He had to edit it because he couldn't PLAY it the way he wanted. And comparing music to art in the way you just did is kinda messed up. It would be more like you PRACTICING to paint the same picture for years and years so that way you could go up in front of a live audience and paint it from scratch right in front of them, LIVE. Music is linear, and takes TIME for the listener to absorb a piece from start to finish. A painting I can see it in its ENTIRETY in one second.
I too have been painting for over half a century And I agree And may I add a realization that… We are always painting or drawing-sketching or dabbing ONE piece.
I know nothing if classical music. Im a working class guy who knows Bowie, Moroder, Eno, Chic, an eclectic mix of mostly rock and pop but i admire anyone who follows there own path. The man is right, recorded music renders repetition pointless. This guy was a maverick, more power to him for that! 👍
Glenn Gould was basically a modern Mozart who came in and broke the rules. On the classical guitar it was Segovia who did not want to be cajoled into the same rules from previous times. There are some people who are savants and Glenn Gould was without a doubt one of the greatest Piano Savants of the 20th century.
10 หลายเดือนก่อน +2
No! Nothing to do with Mozart, gosh! Mozart was a great, great composer. Gould not.
@ Gould was not a composer he was more of a savant who came in an basically picked up on the mistakes of the past and he capitalized on that. Notice the absence of any musical score sheets on his playing this clearly tells you he was just a savant with the ability of mastering visual representations of musical scores all in his head. He was not as good as Segovia in the terms of the outcome of what they accomplished as even in 2023 not many can even get close to Segovia's touch tone technique which was what really defined his sound. Many savants have been born but no one has broke the rules of the Classical Piano as much as Gould did.
The best part of being a musician on whatever instrument is about how you can make a old piece to your own piece, so there is no wrong or right because we are all individual beings with our own storys. Write and play your own ornaments in it, give it a swing tempo even on some works from Bach. Just play what you want to express yourself and dont be a copy of someone that has written dozen of beautiful old pieces.
Maybe listen to (fellow Canadian) Oscar Peterson if you think Gould was the only pianist who grunted and groaned during his performances. Thelonius Monk was another inveterate vocalizer. And so was Keith Jarrett, who looked like he needed to be strapped to the bench to keep from squirming off the keys and onto the floor.
OMG! I bought an album of Glenn Gould playing Beethoven Piano Sonatas from Columbia House. After listening to the Opus 12 sonatas, I immediately returned it to them with comments that there is some noise in the background that makes listening to Mr. Gould impossible. They refunded my $59.50 (a huge sum of money for twelve long-playing albums in 1968).
When I was studying music as an undergrad, one of my teachers used to say, “Great players pay well in spite of their technical problems, not because of them.” I am reminded of that while watching this.
Old pianists die, and some just fade away. But Glenn Gould won't even fade away, simply because he's such a powerful life force of music and opinion. His star will forever be shining bright, whether or not you hate Glenn Gould. What you hear is Gould's style and interpretation. Every pianist has his own style and interpretation. All things considered ... Glenn Gould has far more followers than detractors. If you hear Glenn Gould more than you hear Bach, then you don't know Bach. If Gould were the one and only performer of Bach's music you were familiar with, then you could make no comparisons.
Bernstein and Gould were alike in that they both left live performance for the creative control of the studio. The Beatles did so as well, and created some their most artistic and groundbreaking works.
I completely understand anyone not liking Glenn Gould’s style of playing. But I’ve also listened to his second Goldberg Variations about as many times as I’ve listened to any album in the last 5 years.
I had no idea Glen Gould had been so effected with dystonia. I knew about Gary Graffman and Leon Fleisher. I have dystonia and it ended my hopes before I could launch any semblance of a career.
I’ve become somewhat of an expert on piano related injuries a Gould didn’t have dystonia, he had ulnar nerve compression. Read his bio by Peter Ostwald. I have the same thing and four surgeries later nothing but I’ll wait and see.
Don't like everything from Gould, but his 1957 live performance of Contrapunctus 1 is still the most sublime performance of Bach I've heard. No other performance, not even others by Gould himself, treats that majestic fugue with such hushed, patient reverence.
I love Gould's playing because of his loud left hands and his articulation. A lot of Mozart interpretations play every passage with the same air: heavy legato, a highly limited dynamic range weighted toward piano, subdued staccato, slower tempi, and a subdued metric accent. Some of the Gould Mozart is less than superb but plenty of it is great. Particularly the early sonatas. I don't know why it has become so reviled.
I never reviled Gould.. I just think plenty of other of his contemporaries were much better than him at playing the pieces. I find his performances to be uselessly idiosyncratic. It just isn't compelling to me. Maybe it is because I also play the piano (never concertized, but played chopin/brahms/beethoven/schubert/etc.).. don't know. To me, a pianist should be looking to make his personality disappear.. it isn't about creating a new way of looking at things, but of bringing out the beauty that is already there. The intent of the composer is paramount, your own opinions as a pianist should be organized around highlighting the intent of the music, not being 'personally inventive'. To me that is selfish thinking.
Partially agreed. Gould's Bach Gordenberg Variations just takes me somewhere with no gravity where only peace exists, and when I am passing 12th to 14th, I can find myself stop admiring Bach but worshiping Gould instead, only if this is what Bernstein meant in the video. No wonder his dedication for Bach pieces are over great level. But it is surely consideration-worth to think if this is what all professional pianists should do. When you look at .. more.. what kind of person Gould was, with so 'different' things in himself, it's not always happy and great to listen to his playing. I sometimes get so sad in his interpretation because I somehow could feel the pianist sees and feels something the way more , the way differently than others. It must not had been easy for him to live with the character not only as a pianist but as human, I suppose. I, therefore, take Gould's playing as a complex with sorrows, differences, minorities, compulsion, and loneliness. Bach is the greatest composer ever, so believed to be a FATHER of music, but we DO need Beethoven's toughness and courtesy, Chopin's weak but flattering and glamourous melodies, Beethoven's, Debussy's illumination, and Gershwin's jazzy and complicating texture. I do not recommend pianists today to have eccentricity as Gould did. I rather ask them to find the music in yourselves TODAY and portrait it on your playing. Berceuse, Resenthal, Friedman, Cortot ... those 'older generation' s playing cannot be 'better' than what you play today only because they were in old time. so, Gould's Bach is not the 'answer'. Zimmerman's Chopin is not the 'answer'. WHAT YOU FEEL IS THE ANSWER
Thank you for writing this. I think you make a really deep point. The goal for today's musicians shouldn't be to imitate Gould. But Gould can inspire us, I think, to enter a comparable state of wonder when approaching pieces of music and discover in them our own creative potentials.
@@tonebasePiano Thank you for the reply. Lately I found a good case what pianists today should do in 'healthy' way from the Cliburn winner this year, who is going to work with Bach Gordenberg soon which excites me. Yeah as you mentioned, it's the key to get inspired from older generation legendry pianists in certain pieces, not to copy them because when you start mimicing the pianist, it's no more Bach, or the composers, but it's only going to 'be like the pianist'. I personally admire Bernstein's lessons and interviews about music at Tonbase. His approach is not the answer for sure but I do believe he offers 'what NOT to'. When we know the 'wrong answer' , so it's easier to get the my own-feeling answer in the frame , where it is still VERY big and wide so you can feel yourself to play the musics.
Never cared for the Gordenberg Variations, too many references to Jewish and Scottish folk songs ! I have trouble listening past variation 85 of the Gordenberg 256 Variatiins. It was a sad day when Sarah Gordon married Saul Berg producing a child of questionable genius, Johann Joshua James Gordenberg.
More!!…please!!! I think Leonard Bernstein said it best when he described Gould in front of a live audience as a “…Thinking performer.” And why on earth not be?!! Fleisher used to say “…you have to hear what you are playing in your mind’s ear before you play it.” Glenn had the guts to play the pieces he played the way he did, to bring us perspective to pieces we know ( or should know) so well. That is indeed an artist in my opinion.
Glenn was an OG punk icon, rebelling against the constraints of the accepted norms simply by being true to himself. From the way he sat and played to his humming as well as his love of artists like Schoenberg, his approach was unique in all conceivable ways.
Well Zubin Mehta certainly got to the point! The section on Gould the Provocator is probably the best short interpretation and summation Ive heard about him.
I find that perspective to be selfish and arrogant. Gould is thinking about self and not about how so many others have explored the intent of the piece. Interpreters have a responsibility to be faithful to the intent of the composer. I think Gould gave up on that early in his life.
@@rbarnes4076 With that mindset, you're nothing more than a glorified cover artist, which is what most classical musicians really are. Congratulations.
@@rbarnes4076 "Interpreters have a responsibility to be faithful to the intent of the composer" Why? Who said so? What about all the composers who said - or, given what we know about them, would have said - that they actually would prefer if those coming after them would find ways of reinterpreting and changing their music? This is art, not a battalion barracks where one can objectively show the necessity for regimentation.
It’s the cult of Glen Gould that annoys me. Evidenced here by all the comments saying essentially “if you don’t like how he played that only proves what an incomparable Genius he was!”
At this point be glad you have the music. Most people in the general public have never heard of any music or artists before the 21st century expect for maybe Elvis
@@ramencurry6672 That’s true. We are splitting hairs over the greatest artists, while most people think Taylor Swift and Niki Manaj represent great music.
I would be a bit annoyed by that comment also, because there is no "proof" that anyone was or is a genius. I rank Gould on top, however, I would not belong to a Gould cult, because I take issue with some of his performances. A cultist would never find fault with the object of worship.
"I'm not aware that I'm listening to Bach. I'm listening to Glen Goulds neurotic interpretation of it." Very well put. I had the same exact experience listening to Gould.
I've always found myself in complete agreement with Gould's philosophy of musical interpretation when he speaks or writes. His playing is another matter. As Bernstein says, the notes are Bach but the music is Gould. This is how my 67-year old ears hear it, too. Yet, it's not impossible. I don't care for it, but I'm fascinated to listen - it makes me THINK about what is to be found in the notes which leads me to certain revelations every time. That's the mark of a real musician - the rote, the routine is rooted out and we find ourselves actually closer to the music despite the distance in generations or cultures. Andras Schiff (who idolized Gould) takes a similar approach to Bach interpretation yet he is able to put a rather discreet distance between himself and the page which invites the listener in deeper, I think. Plus his tone, while utterly Steinwegian, is beautiful. It makes me forget the argument over which instrument to play Bach keyboard music on. For me, Gould's playing argues against a 9' Steinway.
Nice video!! I'm always very curious what other pianists think about Glenn Gould. The interviewer, Humphrey Burton, of the BBC interviews done with Gould is still alive. It would be absolutely amazing if you could do an interview with him and ask him how he looks back on this time.
I was born in 1947 by 1956 I was taking trumpet lessons at school and singing in an choir(Episcopal). I first heard Gould the same summer that I heard Miles Davis. Gould did not sound like our choir master nor organist. I was floored. I knew both performers were "different", and special and..........my favorites. While I was at MIT, a girlfriend was a former music student at BU. She and I both loved Anthony di Bonaventura, but she thought my obsession with Gould was, well not inclusive enough, ha! A Grad Student walked into my office one day and saw Gould on my wall and he and were immediate friends. Thank you for this video!
Great video and interviews and insights. The comments of Robert Durso are very important, in terms of the posture and strain and potential damage. How wonderfully revealing that Bernstein says he never heard him play anything that was beautiful. Certainly not in the sense of a Rubinstein. There are times when Gould's playing feels like that of a tactician, but other times he reveals a soul in some difficult unwieldy music. Thankfully there's room for all kinds of genius.
My dad had records of Glenn Gould on which you could hear him humming along as he played... I think they edited that out when the recordings were released on CD in the late 80's.
"I don't hear Bach, I hear Gould" - absolutely correct. Gould nailed the Brahms Intermezzi, but butchered most of the Romantic Period works, sometimes deliberately (mockingly. Hammerklavier, one example). Baroque? Bach? Worship away if you must...
I can't think of a non-composer who has ever attracted as much discussion in classical music. Polarising, true, but the North pole has a lot more people around it than the South. Visionary. Genius. Virtuoso. Master. And of importance transcendent of simple craft.
Great & most interesting video. Thx for posting it. In my humble opinion (I am not a professional player) Mr. Seymour Bernstein's opinion finds me completely in agreement. Please, more!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a performer imposing his will on what someone else wrote, whether the composer is dead or alive. What nonsense. Why do people think that composers are the only ones who know how their stuff should be played? Horowitz was much better at playing Rachmaninoff's stuff than Rachmaninoff was and Rachmaninoff admitted it. That is just ONE example. If I am playing an instrument - a piano or violin or accordion - I am the one in control, not the composer. I don't need anyone telling me how to play. I will play how I want and if you don't agree, you know that every hall has at least two exists.
But when it comes to Brahms "1 in D minor - i like leon fleisher performence, as well as Ashkenazy. Ashkenazi is poetic. I am amazed at how these pianists transfer the notes written on paper, through their brain and then to their fingers recreating the composer intentions.
@@michaeltilley8708 What an astute observation! In fact, I dislike EVERY ONE of Glenn Gould's performances. His ridiculous "interpretations" ignore so many markings on the score by the composer that it is more like a NEW ARRANGEMENT. Not to mention that Gould performed piano solo pieces, yet his entire career INSISTED on turning EVERYTHING into a sing-along duet for his mumbling and humming and out of tune singing and outbursts during EVERY recording or performance he ever gave. Glenn Gould us a great example of what NOT to do at the piano. Leonard Bernstein made a public apology to a live audience BEFORE a concert he gave with Gould as the soloist of Brahms piano concerto in d minor. He said that Gould ignored tempo markings and basically what you were about to hear he disagreed with, and Bernstein said that if he wasnt able to make that public apology for what the listeners were about to hear that he would not conduct the orchestra with Gould as soloist. Seymour Bernstein said that he had never heard Gould play a beautiful phrase, and his Mozart was a TRAVESTY. I agree. Gould took beautiful music and somehow made it ugly and mechanical and lose its heart and soul. That and the fact he could never keep his mouth shut when he was playing and had to sing along like a dumb@$$.
@@allenapplewhite Well thank you. Here goes my third attempt to repl!. I think the algorithm must have been rejecting my insertion of a link to an article by Leonard Bernstein which shows how retrograde is your understanding of his relationship with Gould and the Brahms concerto in particular. If you will just search for "The truth about a legend" you should find it. Here is just one quote which shows how wrongly you have adduced Leonard to the side of Seymour vis-a-vis Glenn: 'Any discovery of Glenn's was welcomed by me because I worshipped the way he played: I admired his intellectual approach, his "guts" approach, his complete dedication to whatever he was doing, his constant inquiry into a new angle or a new possibility of the truth of a score. That's why he made so many experimental changes of tempi. He would play the same Mozart sonata-movement adagio one time and presto the next, when actually it's supposed to be neither. He was not trying to attract attention, but looking for the truth. I loved that in him.' Gould's artistic integrity and commitment to his truth transformed the way we hear Brahms D Minor. In fact, Bernstein's later recording of the piece with Zimerman is even longer than the Gould. And just by the way, there are no markings on 99% of Bach's scores. As the first western artist to tour Soviet Russia, Gould transformed a generation of pianists with not only his revolutionary approach to Bach but the first performances of the music of the Second Viennese School in that nation. I understand that the singing is annoying. I suppose it is one of this things that either drives you crazy or a quirk that you learn to tolerate and even accept in those you love. Gould knew it was irritating and wished he didn't do it; it was necessary to him for his immersion in the music. I accept it in him as I do in Oscar Peterson and Keith Jarrett, who has a far less mellifluous timbre, for the privilege of hearing, as it were, with their ears. Anyway, enjoy your humming-free piano music-there's a lot of it out there!
@@nickstuimlucamatef399 I didn't force my thoughts on him. It's the same for you. What is the difference between what I think Gould is the greatest pianist and what I think my child is the prettiest in the world? Gould is not the greatest pianist for you. Ok I agree. But I have thought that Gould is the greatest pianist for 30 years.
Gould's Berg recording is a good one. His chiding of Berg the composer of all pieces after the Opus 1 as expressed in the published essay, is amusingly parental. He had no problem calling it as he heard it.
That chiding of Berg, and his ambivalence about the Sonata - I think he was struggling for intellectual language to defend why, after extolling it as "one of the most remarkable Opus 1 debuts in the history of music", he felt Berg's approach was inferior to those of Schoenberg and Webern. His picking on "the jacked-up sequence [meaning what?], the melody supported by chromatically sliding sevenths [yes, this is a hallmark of Berg's style, so what is "dissolute" about it?], the plagiarism of the whole-tone scale [can a scale be plagiarized? To my ear, these are the Sonata's least convincing passages, but this was not a career-long habit for Berg]." I think parental is a good description, and it also applies to how Gould took Mozart to the woodshed on the first two movements of the C-minor Concerto. His recording of the Berg Sonata is a very good one!
I discovered Gould with Bruno Monsaingeon show on French TV and was mesmerized by his playing. He became my favorite artist ever. I bought nearly all of his CDs and I believe him to be the greatest musician of our time. And it’s not just his musical genius, it’s also his philosophy of life that make him so remarkable and a model to me.
Bruno Monsaingeon also interviewed the legendary Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter. As with Gould (who happened to be an admirer of Richter), he was idiosyncratic; in Richter's case, he preferred to give live performances in the dark and with just enough lighting to see his sheet music and keyboard. He also only performed music that he personally enjoyed, not adding pieces simply to fill a catalog. I first learned of Richter through his performance of Bach's Prelude and Fugue No. 8 in E-flat minor via the soundtrack used in Yuri Norstein's _Tale of Tales_ animation. Richter is very much worth a listen; his fiery and powerful performances of Rachmaninov and Prokofiev piano concertos belie his slow and sensitive reading of the Bach piece.
@@hlcepeda I agree and also love Sviatoslav Richter. My first classical record was his recording of Bach Tempered keyboard book I which is fabulous and only matched from my point of view by Gould’s own recording. Talking about Richter, I also love very much Carl Richter recordings on harpsichord. He was a real master of the instrument and great artist too.
Funny, I bought a Gould's Goldberg Variations CD when I first started learning piano, and to this day that is the ONLY classical CD I have thrown into the DONATE BIN. I hated it. Why you people all fawn over a man who couldn't even control his out of tune mumbling and singing while he performed--ruining basically EVERY take--or his stupid opinions where he tried so hard to be some philosopher of controversial and assanine statements (Gould was essentially the Alex Jones of classical music in his day), or that dumb footstool he insisted on sitting on at EVERY performance (if it wasnt there, HE WOULDN"T PLAY. What a little B A B Y ), his terrible posture, to his wearing thick gloves all year long to protect his "fingers," to his terrible relationships and affairs and the family he destroyed, what is there to like? So he can play Bach. So can I. And I don't mumble like a lunatic while doing so in front of a live friggen audience or while I am surrounded by mics and being recorded in the studio.
Bernstein's comment is interesting. I listen to his performance of Brahms Intermezzi and the last word I would use it "neurotic" more like depth and feeling and presence. And his recording of the Brahms Ballads is absolutely mind-blowing.
1) Gould's dystonia, if he actually had it, was certainly not caused by his low seating of the piano bench. 2) Gould's "contrapuntal tape" works, The Idea of North, et al, should have the same exposure as his works for piano. They are remarkable pieces. Imagine if Gould could have worked with ProTools...
I could have edited that part better. In the longer interview, Bob Durso is referring to other aspects of Gould's technique as well - it just didn't fit so well here, because he was talking about them in reference to my own technique (it was after all from a master class on my playing, not Gould's). Yes, if Gould had a DAW and a SoundCloud I would never be able to get anything done because I would just be glued to it all day long. I think Frederic Chiu is right, too: if Gould would have had a field day with the Disklavier.
Thank you so much for this video, I like many of Gould's interpretations of JSB, but for me my favorite performances from him are from 20th century music, most often from the second Viennese school, like the phenomenal Berg Piano Sonata (his is one of the slower recordings) or delightful Schoenberg lieder
This idea that all performers should always aim to be as "true to the original music" as possible, or act simply as a vessel through which the composer's intentions are channeled has always been the antithesis of artistry and imaginative thinking to me. Why would I want to listen to more than one interpretation of a piece if everyone is trying to play it the same way? This is perhaps why there are so many incredible, but frankly unmemorable and uninspiring musicians these days - because of opinions of the likes of Seymour Bernstein: "I don't hear Bach, I hear Glenn Gould" GOOD! Thank god for that! Because the last thing the world needs is another carbon copy regurgitation of the same music played the same way. When you think of the true legends of any genre of music, the ones that lifted themselves beyond being known only in their 'scene' and into public consciousness, they are rarely the ones who are just the most technically gifted, or the most "true" to the score - usually quite the opposite. They are the ones who inject their personality into the performance. They have a signature sound unique to them and it's THAT that truly grabs people - and Gould had that, hence why we're still talking about him.
Indeed, a quasi-religious ideology developed in classical music performance during the 20th century of "faithfulness" to the Word of the demigod composers of the past. The historical performance movement developed, in part, to call this bluff ("You want to hear what Bach intended? It wasn't on a Steinway!") Gould was a heretic. He was really a modernist with Second Viennese School aesthetics, and just like Webern orchestrated Bach's Musical Offering - illuminating the music in a way no one had known before, not even Bach - so did Gould at the piano. Gould took it further, cheekily referring to Wendy Carlos' 'Switched On Bach' as the best Bach album recorded in the 20th century. His point - and here he departs from both neoromantic conservatory professors and the historically-informed performance - is that the brilliance of Bach's music existed apart from the historical instruments of its time, or from predefined expectations for how it must be phrased, etc. It was in the purely musical (contrapuntal) relationships that warrant endless reimagining and transcribing.
In defense of my man Seymour, he is a defiant musical figure in his own right, although in a very different camp from Gould. Although he embodies the "Right and Wrong" ethical stance common to the old classical music priesthood - and the Right Way is pedaled, poetic, and pleading - his performances end up anything but mainstream-sounding. He follows his own Idea with the same zeal as Gould and, in much the same way, the end result is unlike any other interpretation. Indeed, I don't hear Bach when he plays, I hear Bernstein! And, if what we admire in a musicians is that singular artistic voice, he has it - albeit at the opposite end of the spectrum from Gould!
It’s actually impossible to play a piece without interpreting it in some way. Even when we think we’re reflecting the composer’s intentions, we’re doing so through our own internalization of the music, so that what we hear and play makes sense to us as performers.
‘Long, flat fingers’. When I listen to Gould I hear Thelonius Monk, who had short flat fingers. But the bending, the liberties with tempo, the hard work at bringing the discords out, I get both of them. If only Glenn Gould had gone head-first into jazz, that would have been something.
A highly mannered performer, but also highly compelling. That comment about his performances carrying their own internal logic will ring true with any player of note.
For me, Gould's idea that Mozart became a bad composer, in later years, I find quite amusing. I believe nothing could be further from the truth. He was hitting his peak at the time of his death. I can only imagine how much greater, if possible, he would have become had he lived another 20-30 years. When you listen to his last piano concertos and symphonies it shows a composer still evolving.
@@corner559 I think Mozart, if predictable, was only because he became more and more apt and in tune with what should naturally follow in a composition. Sometimes when I listen to Mozart, it seems like what he wrote had to go where it went. It was a natural progression that is recognised by true genius. They allude a little to this in the movie 'Amadeus' when Mozart is told to cut out a few of the notes as the score was deemed as having too many. To this, Mozart responds that there are "Just as many as necessary, Your Majesty." An absolute truth!
@@NorsePJ Psychologically, Mozart's music is so profoundly wrong I can barely sit through it. Just as Schiller could note a not minor difference between naive and sentimental poetry, it'd be lovely if the musical world could recognise the same and stop browbeating people who find Mozart or Rachmaninov unbearable (compared to Bach. Prokofiev, or even Clementi) and vice versa. In Bach's Chacone, the shift to the major seems a necessary thing; in Mozart's concerto 23 adagio, it's like he's shitting on himself. These are just deliberately garish examples to make the point.
@@talastra Well, everybody is entitled to their opinion and taste. Personally, I love Mozart's adagio in his 23rd concerto. I find it extremely moving and it takes me on a mental journey. Mozart's 23rd is in fact one of my four favourite concertos of his. It's great that we don't all like the same music to the same extent, otherwise we'd all be listening to fewer composers.
I hadn't noticed before how much he looks and sounds like Gore Vidal. For me, I always love his Bach when I am listening to it but then I listen to someone's else's version and like that one more. Strange cat. Canadian to the core.
To say he was "more of a romantic than people give him credit for" is a total understatement. Everyone loves to fret about "what he did to Mozart", but checkout his recording of the Brahms intermezzi (it's on Spotify) for incredibly sumptuous and not at all dry or neurotic piano playing in the high romantic style. Gould himself said this is "the sexiest interpretation of Brahms intermezzi you have ever heard...I have captured, I think, an atmosphere of improvisation which I don't believe has ever been represented in a Brahms recording before." For my money it's the best of all Gould's non-Bach recordings and certainly in the top 5 overall, and personally the recording of his I find myself revisiting most often. It's a shame that with the continued fascination with Gould, his romantic records continue to be mostly ignored in favour of some of his more attention grabbing "provocations" and indeed, some of his more forgettable Bach recordings (eg the WTC).
Agree about the Brahms. It caught my attention from the first note. Intimate, deeply felt, and one can sense the profound loneliness of the man who wrote it as well as the man playing it.
I agree, the WTC are some of his worst recordings with the exception of a couple (which are essentially unsurpassed, mostly in book 2). Gould at his best is unbeatable and you have to accept based on his moods, he's going to produce something that's hard to accept. He can play the same work in 20 different ways.
IMHO, when Seymour Bernstein says, "I don't hear Bach, I hear Gould", it feels like a kind of compliment to me. Of course, not hearing Bach anymore is over the top, but I'd say the right balance is Bach with a bit of Gould. I'm sure that it wouldn't have bothered Bach at all. He often wrote the same piece - or similar pieces based on the same themes - for various instruments. For example, the same fuge theme for organ, lute, violin... Those completely different instruments inevitably change the feel of the piece. Obviously, Bach was not strict about it. Frankly, I'd rather hear present day player play their own interpretation than going for the 'original sound' and interpretation, which we don't know anyway. Musicologists are good at extrapolating and over-concluding from the limited data they have. Players is not computers, but artists with interpretations of their own. The bottom line is, if you don't like Gould's interpretations, that's fine. There's a host of other players to listen to!
I love Bach on the piano, and I am sure that Bach would love the modern piano as well. He never got the opportunity to play the instrument we all know so well today. The only thing Gould did that was good was to make it more acceptable to play Bach on the piano. He wasnt the first to do so, and it would have happened anyways without him, so thanks for nothing Glenn Gould! Bach would probably be distracted, as I and so many others are, by Goulds nonstop insistence on turning EVERY piano SOLO into a dissonant and cacophonic VOCAL DUET with himself where he mumbles and hums and sings OUT OF TUNE with his own playing during EVERY PERFORMANCE HE EVER GAVE IN HIS LIFE. Nobody elses version of Bach ruins EVERY piece like this! That is why I hear Gould and not Bach. Because I have to IGNORE the recording of the crazy lunatic in his little play-time sing-along and try to hear the actual MUSIC in the background. 50,000 hours of self control to master the piano, and ZERO self control to SHUT HIS friggen MOUTH. Gould is a great example of what NOT to do at the piano. That is the only time I bring him up in a lesson with my piano students: as an example of what NOT TO DO. The right balance of Bach and Gould is Bach MINUS the Gould. If you can shut up and play the piano at the same time, then you are already a better pianist than Gould.
Glen Gould was an enigma for sure. I like his music. The final Goldberg Variations are my favorite recording that he made of that work. The earlier recording was made at the beginning of his career and didn't have as much depth as the last recording.
Seymour does not like Gould's dismissive attitude of superiority, but it is dangerous to judge music performance by the attitudes of the musician. We would have to disown stubborn Bach for believing that he was the greatest, for disobedience, for slandering his bassoonist, for challenging to a duel, for refusing to return from approved leave of absence on time, for rejecting his imprisonment as unjust, for behaving in a snide way, and so on. I dont think Gould ever did such outrageous things. Never-the-less, I am glad Bach was like that because he was right about a lot of it and he gave us music that has no equal. THAT is how we should judge him - by sitting at his feet and listening to his music. Gould taught me that Bach can be performed on a modern piano by playing according to its harpsichord roots. Gould also challenged many things in classical music that still need challenging, not least its snobby, elitist context. For example, there is a central train station in my country which plays classical music to repel teenagers who might loiter and cause trouble. They hate it but they will listen to Gould on Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
⚠️ And that's great, to hear Glenn Gould. This means he is a true artist, has personality, creativity, not only reading papers and making like 99% of other people. Great ! 🙏🙏👍❤️
@@irwinshung809 Yes, Bach is the creator, but only Bach can truly play like Back, and there's no recording of Bach himself. No matter how good a piece of paper would describe a work, one can never truly play as the composer himself. Unfortunately, we will never know and hear Chopin playing his own nocturnes, which is sad !
@@DihelsonMendonca I would argue that most people DO have an understanding of Bach. You don't have to listen to a recording to begin to comprehend his musical sensibility. Most musicians try to study a score and support the composer's intentions. I believe Bernstein's point is that Gould appears to be more interested in conveying his own intentions. As to whether one agrees with Bernstein's assessment, that is up to the listener to decide. However, the idea that we only need to hear Gould, and not Bach, is one against which I would push rather hard. Hope that makes sense :-)
Gould's recording of the Mozart sonatas is (imho) incredible! Even K331 which is pretty jarringly slow at the beginning slowly builds to a wonderful level of energy and joy. It's definitely not everyone's cup of tea, and I respect Bernstein incredibly, but personally I find the whole Mozart recording wonderful (at times funny, insulting, infuriating, too slow, too fast, but I always enjoy listening to it and find inspiration from it. Maybe I'm biased as a huge Gould fan, but there it is. No leg pulling). God bless!
I cannot stand Gould's Mozart. I think it's a very elaborate inside joke, and he fully intended that. It's pure mischief. Playing Alberti basses like counterpoint sounds just plain awful. The wild tempos, skipping repeats, either deathly slow or way too fast. It's like he's trying to show you how boring he thinks it all is. I think he was fed up with the myth that every note of Mozart is pure genius and inspiration, when there are many pieces Mozart rushed through, probably to meet a deadline, etc., and I think Gould wanted to point that out. It's a prank, but the kind of prank only a genius of his caliber could come up with. What's more is he got paid to do it.
Maybe a genius maybe just very articulate and arrogant. He must have been an egomaniac to tear apart musical phrases and change rhythmic notation and perform and record it like that. A very sick man.
My favorite musician is and will always be Glenn Gould. His playing was so unique and I think very beautiful. Some of his Mozart I don't agree with but there were some beautiful moments in there.
I studied in London with Antony Lindsay, who himself had studied with Michelangeli; sitting low allows you to use the weight of your arm from your shoulder and thereby elicit a warm tone from the keys, instead of attacking the keys from a height, which results in a harsh and aggressive.
i met glen father, he lived next door to my sister , my sister had just moved to her new house and her neighbours told her about her next door neighbour my sister made no hint of recognition while i gasped “what!” i felt so proud to know mr gould living next door. you see, my sister had no interest in music. she was into sports and never once touch the piano at home. ”
What a lucky stumble-upon today, finding you and your channel! Can't wait to hear/see more from you! but in the mean time, I just want to say you're the only person I've heard SAY (expose) those conventions in the 50's and 60's that, in your kind phrasing, made people "a bit mindless." One example is insisting that Bach's rhythms should be "sewing machine." Holy cow, never mind that they didn't have sewing machines, how much more insulting can one get than to assume he didn't have enough rhythmic sense to know how joyous music is when a backbeat is implied, allowing for fluidity and in-the-moment focus. There's even one very famous conductor-of-cantatas who has publicly explained that Bach's arias "are supposed to be boring." And don't get me started on Robert Shaw's DEVASTATING-TO-LIVING-MUSIC comment on his famous 1966 "Messiah" recording: something to the effect that the pieces should all just be quick, light, and jig-like - that Handel surely wasn't old-fashioned enough to actually CARE about some "distant mystery." Note, I'm not defending any particular dogma, just spirituality in general. It's like the only thing people care about any more in Baroque music is, How Fast Can You Play It With No Mistakes. WILD applause, if you're the fastest they've ever heard!
I don't care what you say; the music Gould discharges from his fingers (flat fingers or otherwise) fascinated me for the last 30 years. I compared him to numerous pianists, some of whom did not last. Besides: Horovitz played with flat fingers and he made great music. I never heard him play Bach
Chopin reportedly played with flat fingers, too. In opposition to Czerny, Chopin said that each finger has its own role; for example, the middle/third finger is the "singing" finger
I’ll never forget the story John de Lancie told me about a concert Glenn played when John was at Philadelphia as principal oboist. He said a good friend of his was in the audience that night, who was an astute musician. At the end of the piece, the conductor, who I think John said was Eugene Ormandy, completely forgot the last several pages of the score. Well ,if you knew Glenn, he was already a nervous performer. Despite Glenn‘s nerves and the conductor forgetting the score, later that night after dinner John’s astute friend said to him what a great performance it was. The lesson he was trying to portray to me was no matter how bad things get never let them see you sweat because sometimes even the most astute musician can’t tell how bad things went.
It's not possible to describe the genius of Glenn Gould. You have to accept this or not. People who criticize him are either jealous or incompetent to judge, It's as simple as that. They are rather 'Beckmessers'
Variety is the spice of life but not all spices taste good. Not all of a musicians recordings can be expected to be top notch. Gould had an above average oppurtunities to record a lot of music. It's not all good, but the best of it is full of very important, special, tasteful, rare, visionary, ambitious, stand out, unique, skillful, talented, passionate, musical, deep, wise, precise, subtle, and of the highest quality, spices
as a student (many years ago) i much preferred 19th century music to Bach until i listened to his Goldberg Variations. That was the beginning of my love and appreciation for Bach and it was Gould who took me their.
I am not classically trained but I’ve played for 57 years. I can only really speak to it as a guitarist… Sometimes when you play a combination of notes other notes sympathetically resonate but they don’t develop evenly. Some notes require a little more time to emerge, or if you play a corresponding note too hard it cancels an overtone out. I think the tempe that GG chose for most pieces allowed for the greatest amount of this relationship between the notes. Too slow and notes can overfill an auditable space.. too quickly and the corresponding residence is simply run over. When playing music on a guitar sometimes pausing for ever so slight a second before playing the next single note within a chord structure allows that resonance to shine through. If you strictly play the notes as the written on the page you can missed this wonderful aspect. A piano is a stringed instrument that behaves in this way. With almost twice as many notes possible to be played within any timed space. Maybe it’s the amount of pressure he individually articulates each note with, I do the same thing. I slow down many times and just listen to how the overtones develop. For me if I listen closely the instrument tells me how to play it I don’t really need to intellectualize it. And when I play for other people I can see they’re getting it by the look on their faces.
@@LaArtsGuy My head is 'harmony oriented', which I suppose is more 'harmonics,' actually. The best version of any Bach trio sonata I have heard was a slow playing by Wolfgang Rubsam; slow enough to let the harmonies be heard. The YT 'Jacob Collier, Interview part 2' caught my eye because of the two 'chords' displayed in the thumbnail link to the interview; the cluster of adjacent notes can be beautiful, and vary interestingly by adjusting the volume of individual notes in the cluster.
@@LaArtsGuy So are you talking about the temperament, the note strength (amplitude) or the tempo of his playing? All of these are factors that may affect overtones, but which ones are really those that Gould could control? The temperament was modern, i.e. neither that of the "WTC" whose details we have nowhere to know anyways, nor any of that from Bach's era (one didn't have the technology, so not even "by chance"). As for note strength, Gould is known for deliberately decreasing touch sensitivity of the keys, rendering it almost like a harpsichord. There wasn't much for him to exploit in order to augment the overtone effects. As for the tempo, this per se isn't the only factor that decides how long the previous note lingers. Even if we don't take pedal into account (very legitimately indeed for any baroque piece), each individual piano or more generally speaking, keyboard instrument has by its unique construction a unique resonance there on each key. Even if Bach in Urtext only raaarely indicated the tempo (and afaik never with an exact number of beats per unit time), there isn't a large buffer for one to play around with as soon as there are constantly 3+ lines ongoing. Plus, those studying Bach professionally are in fact able to pinpoint a relatively small range of possible "best fit" tempos for each of his pieces. Lastly, we have this monster instrument called organ, where each notes overtone composition can be modified, and I believe it is only until you've heard Gould's playing as well as that of other organists that can you start to draw such conclusion as laid out in the beginning -- even then it's not really enough
No mention here of wonderful Bach played on piano of Kempff, Hess,Edwin Fischer, Gieseking, Schiff, ......Recently I heard the most compelling,on every level, beautiful! performance of the Aria mit 30 Veraenderungen by Francesco Piemontesi, once hopefully recorded .which will provide a new 'Reference' ' no harpsichord or organ player that I have known takes GG's aberrations seriously.....I remember a Dutch colleague, a top harpsichord virtuoso and professor in the NL and BRD asked his opininion of GG playing JSB, " the terrible monster"
Gould was a genius. He was also an absolute, self-absorbed, self-important asshole. Unfortunately, the two conditions are not mutually exclusive. What you do is you listen to some Gould to hear good Gould, and when you want to listen to Bach, you get a hold of someone who has the humility to be interested in J. S. Bach and has the supreme skill and sensitivity to achieve a musical understanding of the greatest western musician there has been or ever will be. Finding those instances with those people is not for the lazy -- a search will be involved. For the intellectually lazy, it's easiest to stick to finding more good Gould and pat yourself on the back over the 'latest discovery'. Signed: a Glenn Gould fan.
@@neilpenesis9203 Thanks, man. That's one of those pieces of Bach that I have most difficulty with.... Any recommendations for the Brandenburg Concertos?
@@mlsarchitect there I'm probably out of my element and couldn't be of much help being a concert pianist.... I have my preferences with later symphonic music however.
@@neilpenesis9203 Happy to hear of one or two late symphonic suggestions. I'm currently on an epic journey of discovery through Cantataland with Rudolf Lutz and the Choir and Orchestra of the J. S. Bach Foundation... I had no idea.... I knew Grumiaux but recently came across Shunske Sato if you want a break from the piano and are interested in an excursion to the land of the solo violin.
I'll add this... Gould came to prefer the recording studio over live performances as an artistic standard toward the end of his life.... I found it interesting that he played the music of scriabin occasionally and was pleased to find a brief excerpt here of teaching a student playing the Desire op.57#1.... the only other recording I'm familiar with is the third sonata which he plays rather straightforward and studied clearly illuminating The works contrapuntal passages.... I am not familiar with his recording of the 5th sonata which I eagerly search for (as a specialist in this music that reveres Richter's hypnotic renditions in live performance)... I'm familiar with his Schoenberg three pieces opus 11 which I have played as well... He was a great intellect and a controversial one no question... It would seem that Bach attracts many deep thinkers initially because Bach could do anything as he was the summation of an epoch... an amalgam of the baroque 👁️
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
I sent Seymour Bernstein this video and asked if he could write me an email defending his Gould opinions, since many of you wished he'd said more here. Instead he insisted we jump on a Zoom call, giving me the chance to record his instant reactions to a couple Gould recordings as well as have him respond to some of the criticisms you threw his way! Part 1 is here: th-cam.com/video/0cB5ewhjf1E/w-d-xo.html
And part 2 is coming in a few days. Stay tuned! Meanwhile, thanks for the lively debate.
Wonderful work; thank you.
Unfortunately the video has been blocked. One the big frustrations of youtube.
I was fortunate enough to have seen it before it got blocked. any way it's gonna be re-released? It was remarkable stuff!!
Damn, blocked :(
I just issued an appeal and restored it. It was the same erroneous claim on the BBC interview clip that led to this video being temporarily blocked. It seems clear to me that these are classic examples of fair use for the purposes of commentary, but automated Content ID sensors don't know the difference.
My Dad is buried in the same cemetery as Gould; about a 10 minute walk from his plot. Every time I pay my Dad a visit I make sure to stop by Glenn’s place to say hi. My Dad turned me on to Glenn Gould as a child and it’s fitting they’d end up as neighbours.
I had a chance to visit a movie set in his old apartment on St. Clair ( 2010 or so). The entryway we used led us into the kitchen, which featured twin stoves/ovens that looked like they'd been there since the 30's, sitting side by side. Memorable:)
As long as you pay your dad a visit first before him 😁
@@giovanna722 I made a pilgrimage to Wawa last year. Stayed in Room 101. Unfortunately none of the staff I encountered at the Wawa Motor Inn knew about their famous former regular visitor. The really sad part was that with the exception of one person no one took much interest. There was a plaque in a room celebrating Signourey Weavers’ one time visit while making a film up there. Nothing for Glenn ! There is an odd life size poster of Gould at the waterfall but that was it. It is an amazing spot and I certainly can appreciate why Gould visited it many times !
Jesus man you're very lucky (ironically, sadly, it's your dad's grave), I live in middle east, wish to see his grave, his statue, his museum.
💔
I love that you included someone who didn't like him! Usually videos are too scared to include opposing opinion, it all has to be hagiography.
I actually know quite a lot of people, both professional musicians and music lovers, who didn't or don't like Gould's playing (me included, I'm from Leipzig and have a very different opinion of how Bach should sound than Gould had). He was in a class of his own. Genius? I don't know.... certainly gifted, but to me cold, distanced and boring. And a lot of his huge fame was driven by very good advertisement.
@@Seleuce Gould boring ? You must have the wrong Gould.
I'm Canadian, born in 1952, heard him lots many years ago, and should have thought he was great. But I didn't and still don't. All the splicing and humming, and the flow of the music itself isn't there. More of a mechanic than anything else.
@@glenngouldification He certainly isn’t boring, but I know for certain that JS Bach and Mozart are both in hell. How do I know? Their eternal torment is knowing what Glenn Gould did to their music.
@@LukeShalz Yeah, but they are geniuses whose music is played and revered years after their deaths. Your torment will be screaming stupid music reviews in hell while no one listens, long forgotten. Long live Gould !
My mother took care of Gould in the final days of his life as a bed side nurse. She tells me about how he had such wonderfully soft and smooth hands.
I used to have smooth hands, but then I had to work for a living.
@@geometricart7851Moisturize and wash your hands regularly, it really isn't that hard 😂 my dad has picked rock for the last 40 years and you wouldn't know it by his hands
Bless for You and Your Mother...
One of my favourite comments about Gould is that it is often like listening to an X-ray of the music--as though you can see inside the composition to discover its inner workings. But I can certainly understand that this can be a love-it-or-hate-it proposition.
Well said
That "X-ray of the music" is exactly how I feel about Gould's utterly breathtaking performance of Ravel's La Valse (which he recorded for his Show on the CBC)! If you've never heard this absolutely thrilling and singular interpretation, you can easily find it on TH-cam, it's most definitely worth a listen (if not indeed a lifetime of listenings)!
It's like an x ray that shows broken bones and brain cancer on a genetically modified alien. I take it you enjoy listening to a madman mumble and hum and sing out of tune as he ruins EVERY single performance with his neurotic interpretations that often completely ignore the markings on the score and is an affront to tasteful, beautiful music. Personally, I want a good, CLEAN recording. Since Gould NEVER SHUT UP, he NEVER PRODUCED ONE.
@@allenapplewhite Speaking of genetically modified aliens. How’s your Mom ?
Exactly that! I didnt know how to put it but that s what I heard when I heard him playing first on a cd. It was so mind blasting that I had to recover for a couple of weeks
"What about what he did to Mozart?" I can't stop replaying that bit.
Masterful!
Show me on this doll where he touched Mozart...
@@riverstun "Show me on this doll where he touched Mozart..."
🤣🤣🤣
I've played Ms McDermott's comment ''we're not creators of music We are the re creators''
Mozart it's Lilly Krauss also Clara Haskil ; all Adagios of Sonatas- Concertos- quartets by Clara Haskil are above the keyboard with a magicelancoly not G Gould the nose in the Key-board
Love the mix of interpretations. There is always room for a appreciation and critique. That is the foundation of art.
yeah, freedom of speech is important, we should have that right. no, wait
Yes! How someone could know how Bach really sounds/sounded🤦🏻♀️. Gould is something from above…
@@Mike1614YT get out. This is piano conversation, not a place for conservative brain rot.
@@ChannelSettingsTvcode At least conservatives, unlike liberals, have a brain.
@@ChannelSettingsTvcode so you oppose freedom of speech? you get out!
I lost it when Seymour asked “What about what he did TO Mozart?” 😂
😂 like he rewrote Mozart's works and destroyed the originals!
But it's true that Mozart is way overrated like Einstein was, there are people for whom it becomes fashionably trendy to exaggerate their brilliance, and when that trend makes it into culture, it becomes almost universally accepted without question, without reexamining whether there's any validity in it. It becomes almost heresy to even pose the question!
This is the sheeple-ness of humans.
Bernstein loves Mozart.
To dislike Gould because he does not worship Mozart is emotionally childish. LOL. Open your mind and heart.
@Dark One Mozart is hugely overrated, his early genius did not transform itself into genius of composition in adulthood sadly, and Gould noticed that, but if you point out that Mozart was crap, you get all these angry sheeple coming at you!😂
@Xavier X But you fall into a worse category. Do you ever question whether you are even remotely qualified to opine that Mozart and Einstein are overrated?
The category you put yourself in is the poseur who loves say things like "Oh, that Pavarotti, he couldn't hit a high C if his life depended on it."
Most people are polite and simply roll their eyes at you. I doubt you notice.
@@bill9989 no, I studied general relativity in University, GR is pretty basic compared to material even from Einstein's own contemporaries. As I mentioned in a previous comment, to point out the fact certain talents are exaggerated by popular culture, like those of Einstein, Mozart and Pavarotti the one trick pony, is to commit blasphemy, the proof is in your angry response🧐
I do not need a degree in music to have an ear for distinguishing between masterpieces and mediocrity, unlike the majority of sheeple who rely on the safety of the usual select names that popular culture grants "genius" status to, deserved or not.
Yes Mozart and Einstein were brilliant, but no better than, and in some cases no match for, many unsung others in their fields, some of whom are rather more deserving of recognition. 😡
02:30 I don't turn to Gould for beautiful renditions. But I've not once listened to him and thought and felt nothing. Every single time I hear him play something, I'm filled with thoughts and feelings. I don't feel the desire to emulate, but I am most definitely inspired.
He inspires me to NOT SING AND MUMBLE when I play. Though, I have never developed that bad habit, as his early teacher instructed him to do, and a bad habit which he NEVER BROKE.
M på lp jo9@@allenapplewhite
@@allenapplewhite i think you re too much fixed on the singing. When you can hear past that, you can hear many fantastical things. But everybody his or her own opinion of course
I am a piano student and this is one of my favorite videos of all time on YT. Sensational interviews intertwined with the footage of Gould. Just amazing
I am a piano teacher and I absolutely cant STAND Glenn Gould. I use him as an example of what NOT to do in many cases.
@@allenapplewhite You are a piano teacher who cannot stand Gould ? OMG, thanks for this. I have alerted Sony and Columbia to recall all Gould recordings. The Gould Foundation has been alerted and agreed to cease all operations. You have done musicians everywhere a great service. Now get back to teaching piano to as few students as possible so as to do the least damage. Long live Gould !
@@glenngouldification Gould is dead. In fact, allow me to twist what Gould said about MOZART back around on GOULD: "The only tragic thing about Goulds death...was that he didnt die S O O N E R." Not only was Gould a narcissistic antagonistic opinionated @$$HOLE and $#!tty human being and homewrecker, but he played with terrible posture that gave him severe back tension and problems, refused to play a concert if the stupid footstool he sat on didnt show up to the concert hall like a spoiled little man-child, IGNORED the markings on the page by the composer and made such drastic changes as to be considered a NEW ARRANGEMENT instead of an "interpretation," lacked the emotional and intellectual complexity to appreciate a genius like Mozart while simultaneously thinking that HE was somehow more of a genius even while he demonstrated by his soulless butchering of Mozart's music that he had absolutely NO IDEA how to play his music (you heard him play Mozart in the video above, RIGHT? I would rather listen to nails on a chalkboard, his Mozart is SO UNMUSICAL), to his petty stupid narcissistic habits and attention grabbing like wearing thick gloves all the time to protect his fingers like a the fragile little wussy man he was, he played slow pieces fast and fast pieces slow just because he INSISTED on choosing the wrong tempo and IGNORING the markings on the SCORE, not to mention his biggest sin OF ALL: turning every piano SOLO piece he EVER PLAYED into a dissonant and cacophonic VOCAL DUET where he sang and mumbled and hummed OUT OF TUNE to himself like a friggen CRAZY PERSON. You may like $#!TTY recordings where the performer lacks the self control to SHUT HIS OWN MOUTH and ruin every piece he ever played in his life, but I personally think that a performer that ruins EVERY performance BY CHOICE is a BAD PERFORMER. You can polish a turd all you want. It is still a piece of $#!T. Gould is the most OVERRATED pianist in ALL OF HISTORY. I feel sorry for you.
Look at my classical music playlist
@@allenapplewhite Wrong! Go back to your rote teaching, pal.
If tonebase could do a similar video about Horowitz, I’d love it. Great respect for Gould!
I second this!
Me too!
That is a great idea.
It's going to happen
LET'S GOOOOOOOOOO
I first heard Gould play Bach’s Goldberg Aria, and it inspired me to learn it. I bought a Roland HP Digital Piano (apologies to the far superior natural analog pianos, and to Mr Gould too), however, I love it. I gave myself 5 years to learn it….it seemed like an eternity; I wrote at the top of the score ‘learn to play it, the time will pass anyway’. It has, and I can play it. Life achievement tick. Next I must attend The Grand Canyon Star Party.
And?
@@goshu7009 And so ends the Universe, not with a bang, but with a whimper…..
@@goshu7009 🗿
No need to apologize. Glenn Gould played on a modern piano. Wendy Carlos is a master on the Moog. The true test is, simply is your version beautiful, and do you enjoy playing it?
@@johnsrabe Heyvthats kind of you. I love my Roland piano, it sounds so real…great through headphones too.
the "Glenn Gould problem" is simple: he is like the great philosophers, he takes something and shows it to us in another light, a light that perhaps deforms the thing but which makes it appear "beautiful" anyway. Gould was interested in the creative moment of the composition and not in the interpretative or "musical" moment. Time gives and will prove him right, indeed today he is an universal symbol of freedom and ispiration in art.
thanks you have pointed that out, although, much of the task for pianists is to get the idea, the construction and the elements behind that special music piece!
Glenn Gould, as good as he seems is just an egomaniac and have found lots of followers!
Yeah. "It's simple". How simple. Or maybe you think it's simple and it is not really.
@matteo r.
You're kidding, yes?
To me Gould is proto-typical of a selfish pianist. More concerned with his own originality than the music's intent. There are some pianists like that in each generation, and I generally don't like their playing.
It doesn't look like high-art or philosophy to me, it just looks arrogant.
If he wanted to make statements on music like you are saying, he should have composed, not played.
very good insightul point..."PIANISTS" and their thinking is also another factor...they like to think in terms of "beauty" according to what our instrument allows...forgetting that as soon as it is "piano" that is no longer EVEN as bach heard it actually "interpreted"...2) they miss altogether that BACH HIMSELF varied his OWN "interpretations" in the reworkings of his compositions...and allowed this or that to be "interpreted" in DIFFERENT instruments...the SLURS and phrasings BY A VOICE CARRYING WORDS...could be different from the "lines" of an oboist..a flutist...a pianist...BACH...on record responded to someone asking HIM how he could PLAY so well: "IT is simple ..play the right notes at the right time" ...and specific instance he WROTE down slurs or dots to indicate a particular thing he obviously felt should be ......what are we to say then ...how he might have handled the REST of the lines?
the ART OF FUGUE...was clearly intended with TWO HANDS in mind...that is so easy to note..but arrives at the later MASSIVE MIRROR FUGUES which required FOUR hands..of crisscrossing double counterpoints...even up to eight voices!! there are no indications of tempo...dynamics...or even phrasing...they could be sung by a quartet...soprano..tenor , alto. bass...as the OPEN CLEFS indicate if anyone happens to be fluent in open score andplayed these with 2 hands at the piano...that s where one..as i used to do regularly...senses..."why...bach leaves it to me to combine the touches and articulations as physically possible and the ears find clear...and create individual VOICE characters like four people talking at once...but intelligible>"
that s what GLENN GOULD does...to his great credit...
more "proof" that bach REINTERPRETED his OWN works: there are PLENTY of ORGAN pieces...part of a huge project he made of KEYBOARD works of which the golberg...the partitas are just part of...which in organ volumes bach REWORKED his "tunes" of the CHORALES...and therefore by additions of new polyphony ...and entirely new compositions....the CHORALE TUNES themselves were...."distorted" in note values..in tempo...etc...i suspect...mostpianists talk the way tey do..."interpretation" from the mastery of the piano..without much exploring how bach.s mind transfered itself...many times...from ONE genre of musical structure..to another...and from ONE medium to another...
for example: THE GIGANTIC OVERTURE and its paired 3 section giant fugue...in E FLAT MAJOR...on the tune used in his "CANTATA" suite...MAGNIFICAT...from IT a tune is used in the ORGAN fugue....that s a RE INTERPRETATION as a new composition for ORGAN by itself...pianists...before tehy talk nonsense about "pianists interpreting bach" should at least play at the organ..some of bach.s CHORALES at the organ..as HE HIMSELF reworked......
GOULD was very early an ORGANIST as a boy..in his church..that says a lot about why he plays AT THE PIANO the way he did...the mind delves into the mind of bach...and as composer...who happens to love playing the piano for ITS own potentials...why do people have such problems with that...like this "PROFESSOR" BERNSTEIN...? they are like dogs who can t walk on hind legs like humans...barking and barking..."that s not how to BARK...woof woof"...how silly...
just enjoy and learn and see what gould as to offer...and it s MORE than many great "PIANISTS" and professors of "bach interpretation" can show!!
As a music lover, it is a complete joy listening to different interpretations, different artists playing or singing the same piece. I love it because it alerts me to the sensitive core of it all, to a nuance, another texture that is surprising, a cadence emphasized, something bolder, softer, warmer or technically astonishing. Isn't that the reason for it all? And of course you will have your favourites, your own filters and preferences. That closes the circle.
You have described what I think too. Gould had a somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation, I always wonder what would Bach have thought about Gould. I like to think he would have been thrilled at the _non plus ultra_ clear delineation of melody and counterpoint, but maybe just a little concerned about its smaller emotion? Thanks for the comment!
@@NinoNiemanThe1st It would be interesting to know !! I think Gould had emotion but it was woven into the layers of whatever else his mind was concerned with.... a more private sensibility, that's for sure! :)
@@chickadddee Very accurate observation!
I love my Gould interpretations, but yes they are very private to his autistic mind, but fantastic nonetheless, we may never hear the counterpoint drawn out to this extent again: it could get a bit clinical, but it does expose an aspect of Bach in these Gould recordings I think. I love all the recordings of Bach, they each show something different about his genius!
@@NinoNiemanThe1st No proof he was autistic of course, but his precision always provides me with a kind of calm comfort. Everything clicking into place you might say. So different from Murray Perahia who I also love. One drains away stress caused by chaos, the other, full of emotion, also eases stress - caused by greed and ignorance.
One thing Gould does better than almost anyone is clearly delineating the voices in a polyphonic texture. In Bach’s fugues you can hear clearly each iteration of the subject even when it is obscured by a lot of activity in the other voices. But when he plays from the Well Tempered Clavier, he often sounds like he’s in a hurry to reach the final cadence. The fugue ends as abruptly as it started leaving the listener wondering what all those notes were in the middle.
Bach sounds better on the harpsichord.
@@patriciayeiser6405 - That it may, but I still don’t want to hear an andante race walked.
@@patriciayeiser6405 It's just different.
Not true, Horowitz did it better.
@@papagen00 What is "better"? Faster, louder, softer? Every pianist, all things being equal, plays in his/ her own way.
Here it is 40 years since Glenn Gould died, and we still listen, watch. Love. Are fascinated. Hear new things in the music. I'm so grateful that after he left the concert stage, he made so many recordings and TV programs--we have much to enjoy, to love, to enjoy.
I pop champagne on every anniversary
here is 70 years since Cortot, Lipatti, Hoffman, Gieseking, and so many others died and we still listen to them. They were far better than some guy who thought he would be more important than music itself.
Except there were far better pianists who didn't ruin every take by mumbling over every recording or during every live performance. Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations is basically the ONLY classical CD I have thrown into the DONATE BIN, and I feel sorry for the person who may have bought it. One of my greatest regrets in life: I wish I had thrown it away instead.
@@allenapplewhite One of my greatest regrets in life is reading your drivel in the comment section !
@@druntopronto7598 Stupid nonsensical observation, check out the numbers Einstein ! Gould is way in the lead, more famous everyday as they slip from memory. Fortunately you have already slipped into obscurity !
Never understood how he didn't 'get' what is so magical about Mozart, but his Bach is fantastic and what an amazing mind he had.
@Isaac Lamonte That was insightful!! Thanks for commenting on something that means so little to you!
I’ll never understand the Mozart-bashing unless he was just being contrary, or trolling. Glenn Gould was an amazing pianist but he was hardly Mozart. I went to piano school with someone very gifted who also didn’t think much of Mozart! Thankfully they’re in the minority. I love Mozart’s music so deeply that I almost take it as a personal insult! But I’m not Mozart, so I should just take it all with a grain of salt. 😂
@@beckylink I think that Gould was being a provocateur, although Mozart's greatest compositions were not for the pianoforte--which was a rather limited instrument in his day anyway. The piano concertos are superior works by virtue of his talent as an orchestrator. I quite like several of the sonatas, but they are more pretty than profound. The tragedy of Mozart is that he died just as he was entering his prime. If Beethoven and Bach had died at 36, most of their greatest works would never have been written! Comparing the output of all composers up to the age of 36, I think that there is a decent argument that Mozart's oeuvre is the most impressive.
@@beckylink when Gould bashed Mozart I thought he did it for the shock effect. Mozart was an innovator in his day. I agree with you, his music is profound and affects me deeply.
@@JohnSmith-oe5kx his concerti are innovative and masterpieces in my opinion. Not just the orchestration, but the ideas are much more developed than other classical composers of the time.
His first Goldberg is so compelling. Bach's music comes alive, vibrant, eternal. Just that one recording, what a gift to the world of music!
I`ve always preferred the second, but no matter, his Goldbergs are very good.
the tempo at which he plays is preposterous and downright offensive to the piece.
just listen to pierre hantai or evgeni koroliov for superior interpretations.
@@nfdhje38743m Lol. Good luck in life.
I'm grateful that Glenn Gould was in this world. He was a wonderful character, and I love to hear him talk about whatever he was moved to talk about. And I always sense his utter and complete immersion in whatever he played. He was also a great "eccentric," of course, but that only added to his charms. And there was the fascination of "the two Bachs" in his hands. He could play Bach like a typewriter gone made in an Invention, and then turn around and play the opening Toccata from the 6th Partita in a richly sensitive way. And then there is the moving portrait of Gould "conducting himself" as he played the Beethoven Bagatelle Op. 126 No. 3, played with the deepest expression. Then there was the "iconoclast" who said the "Appassionata" Sonata was "just Beethoven being Beethoven" and seemed to want to turn Mozart into Bach in his recordings of the former. In short, a many-sided and somewhat unpredictable person and musician. But there is so much to love in the story of his life, his unique personal qualities, his thoughtful meditations, and in his deeply felt recordings of the music that he chose to record. Thank you for sharing these mini interviews of pianists on Glenn Gould--I enjoyed them!
Bravo MarkPorter! As a composer I think the same.
Reflexive, intriguing, inspirative and wide open statements.Bravo to all !
Bach by the extraordinary, unique Glenn Gould :
“United superbly by God,
that ressonates and spreads this sublime music over all Universe.
An infinite fited, adequated, stage for them.
! Luminous and vast.!
And the galaxies and stars fully absorved by both
reverentily brigthens
more and more.
With grace, plentiness,
ressonance and gratitude,
in reverence, imensity and communion."
>>> .ARS SEMPER.VITA PLENA.HIC VIVIT FELICITATEM Gratias tibi tam Gould! ― Yan Ayrton, classical composer. I//////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Itaque Vita Aeternum
@@yanayrton It is interesting that both Bach and Glenn Gould could both be extremely "cerebral" in one work but then deeply "romantic" in another work. Nobody expected the voluptuous sound that Gould realized in his Brahms album, for one example. With Bach, I have a hard time getting into his more cerebral fugues, great and perfect as they no doubt are. The Bach that most amazes me is the stunning beauty of the Largo of the Concerto for Two Violins in D minor. There is the Bach of The Art of the Fugue, and then there is the Bach of that Concerto. That seems hard to reconcile beyond the fact that Bach's compositions seem to be perfectly put together, regardless of the genre and instrumentation. In conclusion, quite a guy! As for Glenn Gould, well, gosh, how can anyone dislike him? I guess his "iconoclastic" side could be off-putting, and he did go to the strange trouble of recording some music that he claimed to dislike. (Maybe record companies were pressuring him for his take on the "Appassionata," etc.?) But when we see Gould at the piano, what is most striking--to me, anyway--is his utter absorption in the music. So much so that he wasn't self-conscious about humming along when the mood struck him, or "conducting" himself at various moments. That seemed to be simply a sincere expression of his involvement with the music he was playing. I'm not sure anyone could "get away with" that these days--people might say, oh, how pretentious, and what a ridiculous circus those actions are, etc. But Glenn Gould was in the uniquely fortunate position of being "given license" to do his thing as he saw fit and be paid by record companies in the bargain. He was able to live in his own world in a way that is maybe not so readily available these days. He was "the eccentric genius," and that label gave him the license to "follow his muse(s)" as he saw fit. On the whole, I would like to have been his friend and been able to sit around and hear his thoughts on anything and, of course, to hear him at the piano. Or even play his beloved "20 Questions"!
By the way, I wish you all the best in your compositional work. It must be a great joy to be a composer. I can only imagine!
Thank you, Mark. I totally agree.
@@Opoczynski I'm happy that you feel the same way!
@@yanayrton I'm hardly a connoisseur of the music of Bach! I know only a fraction of his music. But I have found much to love in the music by Bach that I've gotten to know. I guess some of the first Bach I ever heard was overhearing my dad play part of the G Major French Suite, and I came to love that Suite, in particular its opening and closing movements. I first heard part of the slow movement of the Concerto For Two Violins in D minor thanks to a movie featuring the late William Hurt called "Children of a Lesser God." There's a touching scene in the film in which Hurt tries to convey to a deaf woman through gestures the glorious beauty of that movement, and we see how painful it is for him not to be able to share that music meaningfully and deeply. Bach's Inventions were at home, though I don't recall ever hearing my dad play one of them. Thanks to my University of Iowa piano teacher (Dr. Gregory Pepetone, a marvelous pianist but unfortunately too shy to share his work here), I got to know and love Bach's "Italian Concerto" and the 4th Partita, as well as the Toccata in E minor--the latter of which I "gamely" attempted to master but fell short (as usual). I have gotten to know and love much of the Goldberg Variations over the years as well--though I leave the playing of them to real pianists.
But that only leaves about five zillion other compositions by Bach that I'll probably never get around to hearing! Still, it's wonderful to know that Master Bach is always there, much beauty and abundant perfection always there to be encountered and appreciated.
I will try to listen to your "Verknupfungen!" composition. Please forgive me for not being able to focus on it for awhile. But thank you for letting me know of it and your other work as well! All the best to you!
I can't think of a non-composer who has ever attracted as much discussion in classical music. Polarising, true, but the North pole has a lot more people around it than the South. Visionary. Genius. Virtuoso. Master. And of an importance transcendent of simple craft.
Beautiful. I just love his Beethoven Symphony 6 with the Liszt transcription absolutely life-affirming beauty.
Couldn’t agree more. Life affirming.
Same here. Could - and did - listen to it all day long and every day. Fascinating interpretation.
As a painter, I would add the thought that we can paint a picture over the space of decades, making corrections and changes. and what the viewer sees is yhevlast hour or hour and a half of work. so the "editing" of musical performances to reach an ideal of interpretation makes perfect sense.
He had to edit it because he couldn't PLAY it the way he wanted. And comparing music to art in the way you just did is kinda messed up. It would be more like you PRACTICING to paint the same picture for years and years so that way you could go up in front of a live audience and paint it from scratch right in front of them, LIVE. Music is linear, and takes TIME for the listener to absorb a piece from start to finish. A painting I can see it in its ENTIRETY in one second.
I too have been painting for over half a century
And I agree And may I add a realization that…
We are always painting or drawing-sketching or dabbing ONE piece.
I know nothing if classical music. Im a working class guy who knows Bowie, Moroder, Eno, Chic, an eclectic mix of mostly rock and pop but i admire anyone who follows there own path. The man is right, recorded music renders repetition pointless.
This guy was a maverick,
more power to him for that! 👍
Glenn Gould was basically a modern Mozart who came in and broke the rules. On the classical guitar it was Segovia who did not want to be cajoled into the same rules from previous times. There are some people who are savants and Glenn Gould was without a doubt one of the greatest Piano Savants of the 20th century.
No! Nothing to do with Mozart, gosh! Mozart was a great, great composer. Gould not.
@ Gould was not a composer he was more of a savant who came in an basically picked up on the mistakes of the past and he capitalized on that. Notice the absence of any musical score sheets on his playing this clearly tells you he was just a savant with the ability of mastering visual representations of musical scores all in his head. He was not as good as Segovia in the terms of the outcome of what they accomplished as even in 2023 not many can even get close to Segovia's touch tone technique which was what really defined his sound. Many savants have been born but no one has broke the rules of the Classical Piano as much as Gould did.
The best part of being a musician on whatever instrument is about how you can make a old piece to your own piece, so there is no wrong or right because we are all individual beings with our own storys. Write and play your own ornaments in it, give it a swing tempo even on some works from Bach. Just play what you want to express yourself and dont be a copy of someone that has written dozen of beautiful old pieces.
finally. More of this attitude in classical music, please.
My favorite thing is how in all of Gould’a recordings you can hear his incessant humming but everyone just puts up with because he’s such a visionary
Maybe listen to (fellow Canadian) Oscar Peterson if you think Gould was the only pianist who grunted and groaned during his performances. Thelonius Monk was another inveterate vocalizer. And so was Keith Jarrett, who looked like he needed to be strapped to the bench to keep from squirming off the keys and onto the floor.
OMG! I bought an album of Glenn Gould playing Beethoven Piano Sonatas from Columbia House. After listening to the Opus 12 sonatas, I immediately returned it to them with comments that there is some noise in the background that makes listening to Mr. Gould impossible. They refunded my $59.50 (a huge sum of money for twelve long-playing albums in 1968).
@@Pedsonc01 that’s actually so funny haha thanks for sharing that
A bit like grunting tennis players annoy everyone, but nobody does anything about it.
Toscanini also hummed. You can hear it in some of the recordings. Not always in key!
When I was studying music as an undergrad, one of my teachers used to say, “Great players pay well in spite of their technical problems, not because of them.” I am reminded of that while watching this.
How much did they pay?
Old pianists die, and some just fade away.
But Glenn Gould won't even fade away, simply because he's such a powerful life force of music and opinion. His star will forever be shining bright, whether or not you hate Glenn Gould.
What you hear is Gould's style and interpretation.
Every pianist has his own style and interpretation.
All things considered ... Glenn Gould has far more followers than detractors.
If you hear Glenn Gould more than you hear Bach, then you don't know Bach.
If Gould were the one and only performer of Bach's music you were familiar with, then you could make no comparisons.
Bernstein and Gould were alike in that they both left live performance for the creative control of the studio. The Beatles did so as well, and created some their most artistic and groundbreaking works.
I completely understand anyone not liking Glenn Gould’s style of playing. But I’ve also listened to his second Goldberg Variations about as many times as I’ve listened to any album in the last 5 years.
I had no idea Glen Gould had been so effected with dystonia. I knew about Gary Graffman and Leon Fleisher. I have dystonia and it ended my hopes before I could launch any semblance of a career.
I’ve become somewhat of an expert on piano related injuries a Gould didn’t have dystonia, he had ulnar nerve compression. Read his bio by Peter Ostwald. I have the same thing and four surgeries later nothing but I’ll wait and see.
Don't like everything from Gould, but his 1957 live performance of Contrapunctus 1 is still the most sublime performance of Bach I've heard. No other performance, not even others by Gould himself, treats that majestic fugue with such hushed, patient reverence.
What's not to like in Gould's playing ? ....whatever, you must have your standards . Peculiar ones;) .
Look for the the chamber version conducted by Jordy Savall
“Neurotic interpretation of Bach” Bernstein had no chill 👀
He's accurate.
Indeed, that is a good case of Projection.
@@DLPB-u8w
He's neurotic.
I love Gould's playing because of his loud left hands and his articulation. A lot of Mozart interpretations play every passage with the same air: heavy legato, a highly limited dynamic range weighted toward piano, subdued staccato, slower tempi, and a subdued metric accent. Some of the Gould Mozart is less than superb but plenty of it is great. Particularly the early sonatas. I don't know why it has become so reviled.
I never reviled Gould.. I just think plenty of other of his contemporaries were much better than him at playing the pieces.
I find his performances to be uselessly idiosyncratic. It just isn't compelling to me.
Maybe it is because I also play the piano (never concertized, but played chopin/brahms/beethoven/schubert/etc.).. don't know. To me, a pianist should be looking to make his personality disappear.. it isn't about creating a new way of looking at things, but of bringing out the beauty that is already there. The intent of the composer is paramount, your own opinions as a pianist should be organized around highlighting the intent of the music, not being 'personally inventive'. To me that is selfish thinking.
Partially agreed.
Gould's Bach Gordenberg Variations just takes me somewhere with no gravity where only peace exists, and when I am passing 12th to 14th, I can find myself stop admiring Bach but worshiping Gould instead, only if this is what Bernstein meant in the video.
No wonder his dedication for Bach pieces are over great level.
But it is surely consideration-worth to think if this is what all professional pianists should do.
When you look at .. more.. what kind of person Gould was, with so 'different' things in himself, it's not always happy and great to listen to his playing.
I sometimes get so sad in his interpretation because I somehow could feel the pianist sees and feels something the way more , the way differently than others.
It must not had been easy for him to live with the character not only as a pianist but as human, I suppose.
I, therefore, take Gould's playing as a complex with sorrows, differences, minorities, compulsion, and loneliness.
Bach is the greatest composer ever, so believed to be a FATHER of music, but
we DO need Beethoven's toughness and courtesy, Chopin's weak but flattering and glamourous melodies, Beethoven's, Debussy's illumination,
and Gershwin's jazzy and complicating texture.
I do not recommend pianists today to have eccentricity as Gould did.
I rather ask them to find the music in yourselves TODAY and portrait it on your playing.
Berceuse, Resenthal, Friedman, Cortot ... those 'older generation' s playing cannot be 'better' than what you play today
only because they were in old time.
so, Gould's Bach is not the 'answer'. Zimmerman's Chopin is not the 'answer'.
WHAT YOU FEEL IS THE ANSWER
Thank you for writing this. I think you make a really deep point. The goal for today's musicians shouldn't be to imitate Gould. But Gould can inspire us, I think, to enter a comparable state of wonder when approaching pieces of music and discover in them our own creative potentials.
@@tonebasePiano Thank you for the reply. Lately I found a good case what pianists today should do in 'healthy' way from the Cliburn winner this year, who is going to work with Bach Gordenberg soon which excites me. Yeah as you mentioned, it's the key to get inspired from older generation legendry pianists in certain pieces, not to copy them because when you start mimicing the pianist, it's no more Bach, or the composers, but it's only going to 'be like the pianist'.
I personally admire Bernstein's lessons and interviews about music at Tonbase.
His approach is not the answer for sure but I do believe he offers 'what NOT to'.
When we know the 'wrong answer' , so it's easier to get the my own-feeling answer in the frame , where it is still VERY big and wide so you can feel yourself to play the musics.
Never cared for the Gordenberg Variations, too many references to Jewish and Scottish folk songs ! I have trouble listening past variation 85 of the Gordenberg 256 Variatiins. It was a sad day when Sarah Gordon married Saul Berg producing a child of questionable genius, Johann Joshua James Gordenberg.
More!!…please!!!
I think Leonard Bernstein said it best when he described Gould in front of a live audience as a “…Thinking performer.”
And why on earth not be?!!
Fleisher used to say “…you have to hear what you are playing in your mind’s ear before you play it.”
Glenn had the guts to play the pieces he played the way he did, to bring us perspective to pieces we know ( or should know) so well.
That is indeed an artist in my opinion.
Glenn was an OG punk icon, rebelling against the constraints of the accepted norms simply by being true to himself. From the way he sat and played to his humming as well as his love of artists like Schoenberg, his approach was unique in all conceivable ways.
Well Zubin Mehta certainly got to the point! The section on Gould the Provocator is probably the best short interpretation and summation Ive heard about him.
Would love to have heard Bernstein speak more. The interviewer did most of the talking.
Most of the time the interviewer hardly listen what he had to say... 1:30 5:40
Yes this is absolutely not respectfull.
Completely agree
Terrible interviewer
He kept butting in jesus
The man danced to the beat of his own drum. That's what made him different from almost everybody else during his life.
Dude he wasn't a percussionist nor a dancer.
@@classicfilms8071 🤦♂️
@@classicfilms8071
Lmao
@@classicfilms8071 Umm...the piano IS a percussion instrument...
"Theres no point in duplicating a performance that has been done before"
I like/respect his philosophy
I find that perspective to be selfish and arrogant. Gould is thinking about self and not about how so many others have explored the intent of the piece. Interpreters have a responsibility to be faithful to the intent of the composer. I think Gould gave up on that early in his life.
@@rbarnes4076 With that mindset, you're nothing more than a glorified cover artist, which is what most classical musicians really are. Congratulations.
@@rbarnes4076 "Interpreters have a responsibility to be faithful to the intent of the composer"
Why? Who said so? What about all the composers who said - or, given what we know about them, would have said - that they actually would prefer if those coming after them would find ways of reinterpreting and changing their music? This is art, not a battalion barracks where one can objectively show the necessity for regimentation.
@@rbarnes4076 Wrong!
It’s the cult of Glen Gould that annoys me. Evidenced here by all the comments saying essentially “if you don’t like how he played that only proves what an incomparable Genius he was!”
His turds were gold nuggets and his flatulence the finest of perfumes.
Same as Callas cultists.
At this point be glad you have the music. Most people in the general public have never heard of any music or artists before the 21st century expect for maybe Elvis
@@ramencurry6672 That’s true. We are splitting hairs over the greatest artists, while most people think Taylor Swift and Niki Manaj represent great music.
I would be a bit annoyed by that comment also, because there is no "proof" that anyone was or is a genius.
I rank Gould on top, however, I would not belong to a Gould cult, because I take issue with some of his performances. A cultist would never find fault with the object of worship.
"I'm not aware that I'm listening to Bach. I'm listening to Glen Goulds neurotic interpretation of it."
Very well put. I had the same exact experience listening to Gould.
I've always found myself in complete agreement with Gould's philosophy of musical interpretation when he speaks or writes. His playing is another matter. As Bernstein says, the notes are Bach but the music is Gould. This is how my 67-year old ears hear it, too. Yet, it's not impossible. I don't care for it, but I'm fascinated to listen - it makes me THINK about what is to be found in the notes which leads me to certain revelations every time. That's the mark of a real musician - the rote, the routine is rooted out and we find ourselves actually closer to the music despite the distance in generations or cultures. Andras Schiff (who idolized Gould) takes a similar approach to Bach interpretation yet he is able to put a rather discreet distance between himself and the page which invites the listener in deeper, I think. Plus his tone, while utterly Steinwegian, is beautiful. It makes me forget the argument over which instrument to play Bach keyboard music on. For me, Gould's playing argues against a 9' Steinway.
The Hamburg Steinway D is hands down the greatest piano ever built.
Nice video!! I'm always very curious what other pianists think about Glenn Gould.
The interviewer, Humphrey Burton, of the BBC interviews done with Gould is still alive. It would be absolutely amazing if you could do an interview with him and ask him how he looks back on this time.
Where there is a will there is a solution.
@@classicfilms8071 Let's hope!
I was born in 1947 by 1956 I was taking trumpet lessons at school and singing in an choir(Episcopal). I first heard Gould the same summer that I heard Miles Davis. Gould did not sound like our choir master nor organist. I was floored. I knew both performers were "different", and special and..........my favorites. While I was at MIT, a girlfriend was a former music student at BU. She and I both loved Anthony di Bonaventura, but she thought my obsession with Gould was, well not inclusive enough, ha! A Grad Student walked into my office one day and saw Gould on my wall and he and were immediate friends.
Thank you for this video!
You now are my friend too, GG Alliance. There’s something special that clicks on everyone who likes Glenn’s music
I majored in vocal performance and knew the brass players to always have the best voices. I bet you sing like a bird :)
Loved that kicker at the end. What a great video! Please keep them coming
This video is insanely well done and deserves a lot of recognition!
Great video and interviews and insights. The comments of Robert Durso are very important, in terms of the posture and strain and potential damage. How wonderfully revealing that Bernstein says he never heard him play anything that was beautiful. Certainly not in the sense of a Rubinstein. There are times when Gould's playing feels like that of a tactician, but other times he reveals a soul in some difficult unwieldy music. Thankfully there's room for all kinds of genius.
My dad had records of Glenn Gould on which you could hear him humming along as he played... I think they edited that out when the recordings were released on CD in the late 80's.
"I don't hear Bach, I hear Gould" - absolutely correct. Gould nailed the Brahms Intermezzi, but butchered most of the Romantic Period works, sometimes deliberately (mockingly. Hammerklavier, one example). Baroque? Bach? Worship away if you must...
It's fascinating that the man has been dead for 40 years and we are still debating him as a modern piano artist.
Much like any of the grandmasters really.
Not that weird when you think about the fact that the music that he’s playing is 300 years old lol
@@derbar7051That's not true at all.
I can't think of a non-composer who has ever attracted as much discussion in classical music. Polarising, true, but the North pole has a lot more people around it than the South. Visionary. Genius. Virtuoso. Master. And of importance transcendent of simple craft.
@@MultiCappie What do you mean by "non-composer"?
Great & most interesting video. Thx for posting it. In my humble opinion (I am not a professional player) Mr. Seymour Bernstein's opinion finds me completely in agreement. Please, more!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a performer imposing his will on what someone else wrote, whether the composer is dead or alive. What nonsense. Why do people think that composers are the only ones who know how their stuff should be played? Horowitz was much better at playing Rachmaninoff's stuff than Rachmaninoff was and Rachmaninoff admitted it. That is just ONE example. If I am playing an instrument - a piano or violin or accordion - I am the one in control, not the composer. I don't need anyone telling me how to play. I will play how I want and if you don't agree, you know that every hall has at least two exists.
But when it comes to Brahms "1 in D minor - i like leon fleisher performence, as well as Ashkenazy. Ashkenazi is poetic.
I am amazed at how these pianists transfer the notes written on paper, through their brain and then to their fingers recreating the composer intentions.
Unless the composer or you yourself are playing, you never do
I bet Bach would completely disagree that Gould was "recreating the composer's intentions."
@@allenapplewhite I would bet that's because you dislike Gould's performance.
@@michaeltilley8708 What an astute observation! In fact, I dislike EVERY ONE of Glenn Gould's performances. His ridiculous "interpretations" ignore so many markings on the score by the composer that it is more like a NEW ARRANGEMENT. Not to mention that Gould performed piano solo pieces, yet his entire career INSISTED on turning EVERYTHING into a sing-along duet for his mumbling and humming and out of tune singing and outbursts during EVERY recording or performance he ever gave. Glenn Gould us a great example of what NOT to do at the piano. Leonard Bernstein made a public apology to a live audience BEFORE a concert he gave with Gould as the soloist of Brahms piano concerto in d minor. He said that Gould ignored tempo markings and basically what you were about to hear he disagreed with, and Bernstein said that if he wasnt able to make that public apology for what the listeners were about to hear that he would not conduct the orchestra with Gould as soloist. Seymour Bernstein said that he had never heard Gould play a beautiful phrase, and his Mozart was a TRAVESTY. I agree. Gould took beautiful music and somehow made it ugly and mechanical and lose its heart and soul. That and the fact he could never keep his mouth shut when he was playing and had to sing along like a dumb@$$.
@@allenapplewhite Well thank you. Here goes my third attempt to repl!. I think the algorithm must have been rejecting my insertion of a link to an article by Leonard Bernstein which shows how retrograde is your understanding of his relationship with Gould and the Brahms concerto in particular. If you will just search for "The truth about a legend" you should find it. Here is just one quote which shows how wrongly you have adduced Leonard to the side of Seymour vis-a-vis Glenn:
'Any discovery of Glenn's was welcomed by me because I worshipped the way he played: I admired his intellectual approach, his "guts" approach, his complete dedication to whatever he was doing, his constant inquiry into a new angle or a new possibility of the truth of a score. That's why he made so many experimental changes of tempi. He would play the same Mozart sonata-movement adagio one time and presto the next, when actually it's supposed to be neither. He was not trying to attract attention, but looking for the truth. I loved that in him.'
Gould's artistic integrity and commitment to his truth transformed the way we hear Brahms D Minor. In fact, Bernstein's later recording of the piece with Zimerman is even longer than the Gould. And just by the way, there are no markings on 99% of Bach's scores. As the first western artist to tour Soviet Russia, Gould transformed a generation of pianists with not only his revolutionary approach to Bach but the first performances of the music of the Second Viennese School in that nation.
I understand that the singing is annoying. I suppose it is one of this things that either drives you crazy or a quirk that you learn to tolerate and even accept in those you love. Gould knew it was irritating and wished he didn't do it; it was necessary to him for his immersion in the music. I accept it in him as I do in Oscar Peterson and Keith Jarrett, who has a far less mellifluous timbre, for the privilege of hearing, as it were, with their ears. Anyway, enjoy your humming-free piano music-there's a lot of it out there!
Gould is my favorite pianist.
He is The greatest pianist for me forever.
Wake up, amateur!
@Ricardo da Mata Hey, come on pro! 😆
I've been awake for a long time. 😆
I would definitely not give him the title of greatest he was okay
@@nickstuimlucamatef399 I didn't force my thoughts on him. It's the same for you. What is the difference between what I think Gould is the greatest pianist and what I think my child is the prettiest in the world? Gould is not the greatest pianist for you. Ok I agree.
But I have thought that Gould is the greatest pianist for 30 years.
Gould's Berg recording is a good one. His chiding of Berg the composer of all pieces after the Opus 1 as expressed in the published essay, is amusingly parental. He had no problem calling it as he heard it.
That chiding of Berg, and his ambivalence about the Sonata - I think he was struggling for intellectual language to defend why, after extolling it as "one of the most remarkable Opus 1 debuts in the history of music", he felt Berg's approach was inferior to those of Schoenberg and Webern. His picking on "the jacked-up sequence [meaning what?], the melody supported by chromatically sliding sevenths [yes, this is a hallmark of Berg's style, so what is "dissolute" about it?], the plagiarism of the whole-tone scale [can a scale be plagiarized? To my ear, these are the Sonata's least convincing passages, but this was not a career-long habit for Berg]." I think parental is a good description, and it also applies to how Gould took Mozart to the woodshed on the first two movements of the C-minor Concerto. His recording of the Berg Sonata is a very good one!
I discovered Gould with Bruno Monsaingeon show on French TV and was mesmerized by his playing. He became my favorite artist ever. I bought nearly all of his CDs and I believe him to be the greatest musician of our time. And it’s not just his musical genius, it’s also his philosophy of life that make him so remarkable and a model to me.
Bruno Monsaingeon also interviewed the legendary Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter. As with Gould (who happened to be an admirer of Richter), he was idiosyncratic; in Richter's case, he preferred to give live performances in the dark and with just enough lighting to see his sheet music and keyboard. He also only performed music that he personally enjoyed, not adding pieces simply to fill a catalog. I first learned of Richter through his performance of Bach's Prelude and Fugue No. 8 in E-flat minor via the soundtrack used in Yuri Norstein's _Tale of Tales_ animation. Richter is very much worth a listen; his fiery and powerful performances of Rachmaninov and Prokofiev piano concertos belie his slow and sensitive reading of the Bach piece.
@@hlcepeda I agree and also love Sviatoslav Richter. My first classical record was his recording of Bach Tempered keyboard book I which is fabulous and only matched from my point of view by Gould’s own recording. Talking about Richter, I also love very much Carl Richter recordings on harpsichord. He was a real master of the instrument and great artist too.
Ia aggree with you. It's the best. In second I think is Jean Pierre RAMPAL with the flute
@@StephaneSmarties 👍
Funny, I bought a Gould's Goldberg Variations CD when I first started learning piano, and to this day that is the ONLY classical CD I have thrown into the DONATE BIN. I hated it. Why you people all fawn over a man who couldn't even control his out of tune mumbling and singing while he performed--ruining basically EVERY take--or his stupid opinions where he tried so hard to be some philosopher of controversial and assanine statements (Gould was essentially the Alex Jones of classical music in his day), or that dumb footstool he insisted on sitting on at EVERY performance (if it wasnt there, HE WOULDN"T PLAY. What a little B A B Y ), his terrible posture, to his wearing thick gloves all year long to protect his "fingers," to his terrible relationships and affairs and the family he destroyed, what is there to like? So he can play Bach. So can I. And I don't mumble like a lunatic while doing so in front of a live friggen audience or while I am surrounded by mics and being recorded in the studio.
Bernstein's comment is interesting. I listen to his performance of Brahms Intermezzi and the last word I would use it "neurotic" more like depth and feeling and presence. And his recording of the Brahms Ballads is absolutely mind-blowing.
Gone but never to be forgotten.
He left us far too soon.
They all do. That's life dude. Find your own inner genius. It's there waiting to come out.
@@classicfilms8071 👍
1) Gould's dystonia, if he actually had it, was certainly not caused by his low seating of the piano bench. 2) Gould's "contrapuntal tape" works, The Idea of North, et al, should have the same exposure as his works for piano. They are remarkable pieces. Imagine if Gould could have worked with ProTools...
I could have edited that part better. In the longer interview, Bob Durso is referring to other aspects of Gould's technique as well - it just didn't fit so well here, because he was talking about them in reference to my own technique (it was after all from a master class on my playing, not Gould's).
Yes, if Gould had a DAW and a SoundCloud I would never be able to get anything done because I would just be glued to it all day long. I think Frederic Chiu is right, too: if Gould would have had a field day with the Disklavier.
Unlike the piano playing from some of these people, you can hear Bach's counterpoint through Gould.
But isn't that the point?
That is very true!
Nice video. I tend to be not a Gould fan, but he was brilliant, and this is a good, quick primer on him. I didn’t know Ax is an admirer.
Someone who was already half in heaven when he played piano on earth.
What a fascinating video, thank you! Us musicians are odd. "I don't hear any beauty when he plays Bach". I just had to laugh...great stuff!
I loved hearing him admit "as ridiculous as it seems" at the end.
Thank you so much for this video, I like many of Gould's interpretations of JSB, but for me my favorite performances from him are from 20th century music, most often from the second Viennese school, like the phenomenal Berg Piano Sonata (his is one of the slower recordings) or delightful Schoenberg lieder
His transcription of Ravel's La Valse is just insane, he really recreated the chaos at the end of the orchestrated version
His recordings of the 3 Hindemith Piano Sonatas are my favourite things he did.
This idea that all performers should always aim to be as "true to the original music" as possible, or act simply as a vessel through which the composer's intentions are channeled has always been the antithesis of artistry and imaginative thinking to me. Why would I want to listen to more than one interpretation of a piece if everyone is trying to play it the same way? This is perhaps why there are so many incredible, but frankly unmemorable and uninspiring musicians these days - because of opinions of the likes of Seymour Bernstein:
"I don't hear Bach, I hear Glenn Gould"
GOOD! Thank god for that! Because the last thing the world needs is another carbon copy regurgitation of the same music played the same way.
When you think of the true legends of any genre of music, the ones that lifted themselves beyond being known only in their 'scene' and into public consciousness, they are rarely the ones who are just the most technically gifted, or the most "true" to the score - usually quite the opposite. They are the ones who inject their personality into the performance. They have a signature sound unique to them and it's THAT that truly grabs people - and Gould had that, hence why we're still talking about him.
Yes exactly right…
Why isn't this the top comment?
Indeed, a quasi-religious ideology developed in classical music performance during the 20th century of "faithfulness" to the Word of the demigod composers of the past. The historical performance movement developed, in part, to call this bluff ("You want to hear what Bach intended? It wasn't on a Steinway!") Gould was a heretic. He was really a modernist with Second Viennese School aesthetics, and just like Webern orchestrated Bach's Musical Offering - illuminating the music in a way no one had known before, not even Bach - so did Gould at the piano. Gould took it further, cheekily referring to Wendy Carlos' 'Switched On Bach' as the best Bach album recorded in the 20th century. His point - and here he departs from both neoromantic conservatory professors and the historically-informed performance - is that the brilliance of Bach's music existed apart from the historical instruments of its time, or from predefined expectations for how it must be phrased, etc. It was in the purely musical (contrapuntal) relationships that warrant endless reimagining and transcribing.
In defense of my man Seymour, he is a defiant musical figure in his own right, although in a very different camp from Gould. Although he embodies the "Right and Wrong" ethical stance common to the old classical music priesthood - and the Right Way is pedaled, poetic, and pleading - his performances end up anything but mainstream-sounding. He follows his own Idea with the same zeal as Gould and, in much the same way, the end result is unlike any other interpretation. Indeed, I don't hear Bach when he plays, I hear Bernstein! And, if what we admire in a musicians is that singular artistic voice, he has it - albeit at the opposite end of the spectrum from Gould!
It’s actually impossible to play a piece without interpreting it in some way. Even when we think we’re reflecting the composer’s intentions, we’re doing so through our own internalization of the music, so that what we hear and play makes sense to us as performers.
‘Long, flat fingers’. When I listen to Gould I hear Thelonius Monk, who had short flat fingers. But the bending, the liberties with tempo, the hard work at bringing the discords out, I get both of them. If only Glenn Gould had gone head-first into jazz, that would have been something.
Gould playing jazz, that would have been an awesome thing to behold
A highly mannered performer, but also highly compelling. That comment about his performances carrying their own internal logic will ring true with any player of note.
For me, Gould's idea that Mozart became a bad composer, in later years, I find quite amusing. I believe nothing could be further from the truth. He was hitting his peak at the time of his death. I can only imagine how much greater, if possible, he would have become had he lived another 20-30 years. When you listen to his last piano concertos and symphonies it shows a composer still evolving.
It's because he was dead wrong. And he played all of Bach's music on the wrong instrument. It should be played on harpsichord.
Question: Would you rather hear Bach on a bad harpsichord or fine piano. Your sweeping generalization makes me want to shriek.
@@corner559 I think Mozart, if predictable, was only because he became more and more apt and in tune with what should naturally follow in a composition. Sometimes when I listen to Mozart, it seems like what he wrote had to go where it went. It was a natural progression that is recognised by true genius. They allude a little to this in the movie 'Amadeus' when Mozart is told to cut out a few of the notes as the score was deemed as having too many. To this, Mozart responds that there are "Just as many as necessary, Your Majesty." An absolute truth!
@@NorsePJ Psychologically, Mozart's music is so profoundly wrong I can barely sit through it. Just as Schiller could note a not minor difference between naive and sentimental poetry, it'd be lovely if the musical world could recognise the same and stop browbeating people who find Mozart or Rachmaninov unbearable (compared to Bach. Prokofiev, or even Clementi) and vice versa. In Bach's Chacone, the shift to the major seems a necessary thing; in Mozart's concerto 23 adagio, it's like he's shitting on himself. These are just deliberately garish examples to make the point.
@@talastra Well, everybody is entitled to their opinion and taste. Personally, I love Mozart's adagio in his 23rd concerto. I find it extremely moving and it takes me on a mental journey. Mozart's 23rd is in fact one of my four favourite concertos of his.
It's great that we don't all like the same music to the same extent, otherwise we'd all be listening to fewer composers.
3:34 Damnnn who gave my boy Gould the drop fade??
I hadn't noticed before how much he looks and sounds like Gore Vidal.
For me, I always love his Bach when I am listening to it but then I listen to someone's else's version and like that one more.
Strange cat. Canadian to the core.
I love Gould so much. Listen to him every day. I bought his Columbia catalog mp3.
Nobody can hear Bach in Bach's music beyond the notes themselves. We will never know first hand the idiosyncrasies of performance in those times.
Came here to say this. Bach likely sounded nothing like the people that claimed to know him the best.
And Gould isn't even playing Bach on an instrument that existed at that time, but no one seems to mind that detail in particular.
To say he was "more of a romantic than people give him credit for" is a total understatement. Everyone loves to fret about "what he did to Mozart", but checkout his recording of the Brahms intermezzi (it's on Spotify) for incredibly sumptuous and not at all dry or neurotic piano playing in the high romantic style. Gould himself said this is "the sexiest interpretation of Brahms intermezzi you have ever heard...I have captured, I think, an atmosphere of improvisation which I don't believe has ever been represented in a Brahms recording before." For my money it's the best of all Gould's non-Bach recordings and certainly in the top 5 overall, and personally the recording of his I find myself revisiting most often. It's a shame that with the continued fascination with Gould, his romantic records continue to be mostly ignored in favour of some of his more attention grabbing "provocations" and indeed, some of his more forgettable Bach recordings (eg the WTC).
Agree about the Brahms. It caught my attention from the first note. Intimate, deeply felt, and one can sense the profound loneliness of the man who wrote it as well as the man playing it.
I agree, the WTC are some of his worst recordings with the exception of a couple (which are essentially unsurpassed, mostly in book 2). Gould at his best is unbeatable and you have to accept based on his moods, he's going to produce something that's hard to accept. He can play the same work in 20 different ways.
Love his Brahms
Great job with the interviews and putting so much fascinating information together! Thank you.
IMHO, when Seymour Bernstein says, "I don't hear Bach, I hear Gould", it feels like a kind of compliment to me. Of course, not hearing Bach anymore is over the top, but I'd say the right balance is Bach with a bit of Gould. I'm sure that it wouldn't have bothered Bach at all. He often wrote the same piece - or similar pieces based on the same themes - for various instruments. For example, the same fuge theme for organ, lute, violin... Those completely different instruments inevitably change the feel of the piece. Obviously, Bach was not strict about it. Frankly, I'd rather hear present day player play their own interpretation than going for the 'original sound' and interpretation, which we don't know anyway. Musicologists are good at extrapolating and over-concluding from the limited data they have. Players is not computers, but artists with interpretations of their own.
The bottom line is, if you don't like Gould's interpretations, that's fine. There's a host of other players to listen to!
I think he means more like, bach would not be able to recognise the piece as his own.
I love Bach on the piano, and I am sure that Bach would love the modern piano as well. He never got the opportunity to play the instrument we all know so well today. The only thing Gould did that was good was to make it more acceptable to play Bach on the piano. He wasnt the first to do so, and it would have happened anyways without him, so thanks for nothing Glenn Gould! Bach would probably be distracted, as I and so many others are, by Goulds nonstop insistence on turning EVERY piano SOLO into a dissonant and cacophonic VOCAL DUET with himself where he mumbles and hums and sings OUT OF TUNE with his own playing during EVERY PERFORMANCE HE EVER GAVE IN HIS LIFE. Nobody elses version of Bach ruins EVERY piece like this! That is why I hear Gould and not Bach. Because I have to IGNORE the recording of the crazy lunatic in his little play-time sing-along and try to hear the actual MUSIC in the background. 50,000 hours of self control to master the piano, and ZERO self control to SHUT HIS friggen MOUTH. Gould is a great example of what NOT to do at the piano. That is the only time I bring him up in a lesson with my piano students: as an example of what NOT TO DO. The right balance of Bach and Gould is Bach MINUS the Gould. If you can shut up and play the piano at the same time, then you are already a better pianist than Gould.
Glen Gould was an enigma for sure. I like his music. The final Goldberg Variations are my favorite recording that he made of that work. The earlier recording was made at the beginning of his career and didn't have as much depth as the last recording.
Seymour does not like Gould's dismissive attitude of superiority, but it is dangerous to judge music performance by the attitudes of the musician. We would have to disown stubborn Bach for believing that he was the greatest, for disobedience, for slandering his bassoonist, for challenging to a duel, for refusing to return from approved leave of absence on time, for rejecting his imprisonment as unjust, for behaving in a snide way, and so on. I dont think Gould ever did such outrageous things. Never-the-less, I am glad Bach was like that because he was right about a lot of it and he gave us music that has no equal. THAT is how we should judge him - by sitting at his feet and listening to his music. Gould taught me that Bach can be performed on a modern piano by playing according to its harpsichord roots. Gould also challenged many things in classical music that still need challenging, not least its snobby, elitist context. For example, there is a central train station in my country which plays classical music to repel teenagers who might loiter and cause trouble. They hate it but they will listen to Gould on Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
⚠️ And that's great, to hear Glenn Gould. This means he is a true artist, has personality, creativity, not only reading papers and making like 99% of other people. Great ! 🙏🙏👍❤️
Though one may argue that Bach was the greater genius, and that it is also important to hear him...
@@irwinshung809 Yes, Bach is the creator, but only Bach can truly play like Back, and there's no recording of Bach himself. No matter how good a piece of paper would describe a work, one can never truly play as the composer himself. Unfortunately, we will never know and hear Chopin playing his own nocturnes, which is sad !
@@DihelsonMendonca I would argue that most people DO have an understanding of Bach. You don't have to listen to a recording to begin to comprehend his musical sensibility.
Most musicians try to study a score and support the composer's intentions. I believe Bernstein's point is that Gould appears to be more interested in conveying his own intentions.
As to whether one agrees with Bernstein's assessment, that is up to the listener to decide. However, the idea that we only need to hear Gould, and not Bach, is one against which I would push rather hard.
Hope that makes sense :-)
Gould's recording of the Mozart sonatas is (imho) incredible! Even K331 which is pretty jarringly slow at the beginning slowly builds to a wonderful level of energy and joy. It's definitely not everyone's cup of tea, and I respect Bernstein incredibly, but personally I find the whole Mozart recording wonderful (at times funny, insulting, infuriating, too slow, too fast, but I always enjoy listening to it and find inspiration from it. Maybe I'm biased as a huge Gould fan, but there it is. No leg pulling). God bless!
Oh, bleh. He was pulling our leg.
I cannot stand Gould's Mozart. I think it's a very elaborate inside joke, and he fully intended that. It's pure mischief. Playing Alberti basses like counterpoint sounds just plain awful. The wild tempos, skipping repeats, either deathly slow or way too fast. It's like he's trying to show you how boring he thinks it all is. I think he was fed up with the myth that every note of Mozart is pure genius and inspiration, when there are many pieces Mozart rushed through, probably to meet a deadline, etc., and I think Gould wanted to point that out. It's a prank, but the kind of prank only a genius of his caliber could come up with. What's more is he got paid to do it.
@@mwhite6522 it's pretty outrageous actually.
"Incredible" can mean two things: 1. It cannot be believed because it is so good. 2. It cannot be believed because it is so bad.
Maybe a genius maybe just very articulate and arrogant. He must have been an egomaniac to tear apart musical phrases and change rhythmic notation and perform and record it like that. A very sick man.
My favorite musician is and will always be Glenn Gould. His playing was so unique and I think very beautiful. Some of his Mozart I don't agree with but there were some beautiful moments in there.
I studied in London with Antony Lindsay, who himself had studied with Michelangeli; sitting low allows you to use the weight of your arm from your shoulder and thereby elicit a warm tone from the keys, instead of attacking the keys from a height, which results in a harsh and aggressive.
i met glen father, he lived next door to my sister , my sister had just moved to her new house and her neighbours told her about her next door neighbour my sister made no hint of recognition while i gasped “what!” i felt so proud to know mr gould living next door. you see, my sister had no interest in music. she was into sports and never once touch the piano at home.
”
Nothing wrong with hearing Gould, especially in comparison with so many capable musicians who really do not understand Bach as well as Gould does.
What a lucky stumble-upon today, finding you and your channel! Can't wait to hear/see more from you! but in the mean time, I just want to say you're the only person I've heard SAY (expose) those conventions in the 50's and 60's that, in your kind phrasing, made people "a bit mindless." One example is insisting that Bach's rhythms should be "sewing machine." Holy cow, never mind that they didn't have sewing machines, how much more insulting can one get than to assume he didn't have enough rhythmic sense to know how joyous music is when a backbeat is implied, allowing for fluidity and in-the-moment focus. There's even one very famous conductor-of-cantatas who has publicly explained that Bach's arias "are supposed to be boring." And don't get me started on Robert Shaw's DEVASTATING-TO-LIVING-MUSIC comment on his famous 1966 "Messiah" recording: something to the effect that the pieces should all just be quick, light, and jig-like - that Handel surely wasn't old-fashioned enough to actually CARE about some "distant mystery." Note, I'm not defending any particular dogma, just spirituality in general. It's like the only thing people care about any more in Baroque music is, How Fast Can You Play It With No Mistakes. WILD applause, if you're the fastest they've ever heard!
I don't care what you say; the music Gould discharges from his fingers (flat fingers or otherwise) fascinated me for the last 30 years. I compared him to numerous pianists, some of whom did not last.
Besides: Horovitz played with flat fingers and he made great music. I never heard him play Bach
Chopin reportedly played with flat fingers, too. In opposition to Czerny, Chopin said that each finger has its own role; for example, the middle/third finger is the "singing" finger
I’ll never forget the story John de Lancie told me about a concert Glenn played when John was at Philadelphia as principal oboist. He said a good friend of his was in the audience that night, who was an astute musician. At the end of the piece, the conductor, who I think John said was Eugene Ormandy, completely forgot the last several pages of the score. Well ,if you knew Glenn, he was already a nervous performer. Despite Glenn‘s nerves and the conductor forgetting the score, later that night after dinner John’s astute friend said to him what a great performance it was. The lesson he was trying to portray to me was no matter how bad things get never let them see you sweat because sometimes even the most astute musician can’t tell how bad things went.
Videos and channels like these make me so thankful for youtube..
Seymour Bernstein criticizing Gould is like a Volkswagon downing the performance of a Ferrari.
Absurd is the word...
if you like gould's bach, you should listen to a relatively unknown recording of his, playing handel's harpsichord suites on a harpsichord!
It's not possible to describe the genius of Glenn Gould.
You have to accept this or not. People who criticize him are
either jealous or incompetent to judge, It's as simple as that.
They are rather 'Beckmessers'
Variety is the spice of life but not all spices taste good. Not all of a musicians recordings can be expected to be top notch. Gould had an above average oppurtunities to record a lot of music.
It's not all good, but the best of it is full of very important, special, tasteful, rare, visionary, ambitious, stand out, unique, skillful, talented, passionate, musical, deep, wise, precise, subtle, and of the highest quality, spices
It's lacking some adjectives in there, put more
Gould's Goldberg Variations are the gold standard. Whenever I'm depressed, I turn I listen to them. Immediately, I feel better.
Likewise. I absolutely love his modern version!
Yes, one with some ears starts there. But Nikolaeva surpasses him.
as a student (many years ago) i much preferred 19th century music to Bach until i listened to his Goldberg Variations. That was the beginning of my love and appreciation for Bach and it was Gould who took me their.
He put the gold into the Goldberg Variations.
There's also his version of The Well Tempered Clavier , my way to go when I want to think deeply and relax at the same time.
Gould illuminated the Polyphony of the overtone Series in the way he played.. So many others ran rite over this treasure in Bach’s music.
How can you illuminate the polyphony of the overtone series? It has 'poly-harmonics' if anything.
I am not classically trained but I’ve played for 57 years.
I can only really speak to it as a guitarist… Sometimes when you play a combination of notes other notes sympathetically resonate but they don’t develop evenly. Some notes require a little more time to emerge, or if you play a corresponding note too hard it cancels an overtone out. I think the tempe that GG chose for most pieces allowed for the greatest amount of this relationship between the notes. Too slow and notes can overfill an auditable space.. too quickly and the corresponding residence is simply run over.
When playing music on a guitar sometimes pausing for ever so slight a second before playing the next single note within a chord structure allows that resonance to shine through. If you strictly play the notes as the written on the page you can missed this wonderful aspect. A piano is a stringed instrument that behaves in this way. With almost twice as many notes possible to be played within any timed space.
Maybe it’s the amount of pressure he individually articulates each note with, I do the same thing. I slow down many times and just listen to how the overtones develop. For me if I listen closely the instrument tells me how to play it I don’t really need to intellectualize it.
And when I play for other people I can see they’re getting it by the look on their faces.
@@LaArtsGuy But did they really "get it" or was it just the liquor kicking in.
@@LaArtsGuy My head is 'harmony oriented', which I suppose is more 'harmonics,' actually. The best version of any Bach trio sonata I have heard was a slow playing by Wolfgang Rubsam; slow enough to let the harmonies be heard. The YT 'Jacob Collier, Interview part 2' caught my eye because of the two 'chords' displayed in the thumbnail link to the interview; the cluster of adjacent notes can be beautiful, and vary interestingly by adjusting the volume of individual notes in the cluster.
@@LaArtsGuy So are you talking about the temperament, the note strength (amplitude) or the tempo of his playing? All of these are factors that may affect overtones, but which ones are really those that Gould could control?
The temperament was modern, i.e. neither that of the "WTC" whose details we have nowhere to know anyways, nor any of that from Bach's era (one didn't have the technology, so not even "by chance").
As for note strength, Gould is known for deliberately decreasing touch sensitivity of the keys, rendering it almost like a harpsichord. There wasn't much for him to exploit in order to augment the overtone effects.
As for the tempo, this per se isn't the only factor that decides how long the previous note lingers. Even if we don't take pedal into account (very legitimately indeed for any baroque piece), each individual piano or more generally speaking, keyboard instrument has by its unique construction a unique resonance there on each key. Even if Bach in Urtext only raaarely indicated the tempo (and afaik never with an exact number of beats per unit time), there isn't a large buffer for one to play around with as soon as there are constantly 3+ lines ongoing. Plus, those studying Bach professionally are in fact able to pinpoint a relatively small range of possible "best fit" tempos for each of his pieces.
Lastly, we have this monster instrument called organ, where each notes overtone composition can be modified, and I believe it is only until you've heard Gould's playing as well as that of other organists that can you start to draw such conclusion as laid out in the beginning -- even then it's not really enough
Seymour bernstein will never be remembered. Glenn gould will never be forgotten.
yeah,
I know ZERO about high level pianistry but this was fascinating especially the comp editing he was doing on tape.
Proud member of the cult of Gould here.
Ditto!
Prouder member
Founding member !
Same here.
Ha ha. I am too!
No mention here of wonderful Bach played on piano of Kempff, Hess,Edwin Fischer, Gieseking, Schiff, ......Recently I heard the most compelling,on every level, beautiful! performance of the Aria mit 30 Veraenderungen by Francesco Piemontesi, once hopefully recorded .which will provide a new 'Reference' ' no harpsichord or organ player that I have known takes GG's aberrations seriously.....I remember a Dutch colleague, a top harpsichord virtuoso and professor in the NL and BRD asked his opininion of GG playing JSB, " the terrible monster"
...and no one wants to hear these "harpsichord virtuosi." What a bunch of pretentious fucktards.
Gould was a genius.
He was also an absolute, self-absorbed, self-important asshole.
Unfortunately, the two conditions are not mutually exclusive.
What you do is you listen to some Gould to hear good Gould,
and when you want to listen to Bach, you get a hold of someone who has the humility to be interested in J. S. Bach and has the supreme skill and sensitivity to achieve a musical understanding of the greatest western musician there has been or ever will be.
Finding those instances with those people is not for the lazy -- a search will be involved.
For the intellectually lazy,
it's easiest to stick to finding more good Gould and pat yourself on the back over the 'latest discovery'.
Signed:
a Glenn Gould fan.
Edwin Fisher Bach chromatic fantasy (and fugue) beauty sine qua non in this music in my humble opinion 🎹
@@neilpenesis9203
Thanks, man.
That's one of those pieces of Bach that I have most difficulty with....
Any recommendations for the Brandenburg Concertos?
@@mlsarchitect there I'm probably out of my element and couldn't be of much help being a concert pianist.... I have my preferences with later symphonic music however.
@@neilpenesis9203
Happy to hear of one or two late symphonic suggestions.
I'm currently on an epic journey of discovery through Cantataland with Rudolf Lutz and the Choir and Orchestra of the J. S. Bach Foundation... I had no idea....
I knew Grumiaux but recently came across Shunske Sato if you want a break from the piano and are interested in an excursion to the land of the solo violin.
I'll add this... Gould came to prefer the recording studio over live performances as an artistic standard toward the end of his life.... I found it interesting that he played the music of scriabin occasionally and was pleased to find a brief excerpt here of teaching a student playing the Desire op.57#1.... the only other recording I'm familiar with is the third sonata which he plays rather straightforward and studied clearly illuminating The works contrapuntal passages.... I am not familiar with his recording of the 5th sonata which I eagerly search for (as a specialist in this music that reveres Richter's hypnotic renditions in live performance)... I'm familiar with his Schoenberg three pieces opus 11 which I have played as well... He was a great intellect and a controversial one no question... It would seem that Bach attracts many deep thinkers initially because Bach could do anything as he was the summation of an epoch... an amalgam of the baroque 👁️