Glenn Gould and me

If you look up the word “eccentric” in the dictionary, you’ll see an image of the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. Not just because he performed sitting on a sawed-off chair with his eyes nearly level with the keyboard and with a flat-fingered style. Not just because, like Keith Jarrett, he would sometimes vocalize while playing. No, it was mainly because of his iconoclastic interpretations.

I have his notorious 1956 recording of the Goldberg Variations. I’m not sufficiently versed in Bach performance style to critique the recording, but it has certainly elicited strong reactions among the Bach performance critics. I also have Keith Jarrett’s harpsichord recording. I like them both for different reasons.

I’ve owned an LP recording of Book 1 by Anthony Newman and Book 2 by Wanda Landowska. Both are harpsichord performances. Of the two recordings, the Landowska is by far the most eccentric—not only because of her decidedly romantic stylings, but because it’s performed on a Pleyel instrument, which exaggerates the pomposity in some passages.

Well, I’ve mostly avoided playing LPs, since I have to get up and flip the disc every 15 minutes. I recently got the Book 1 CD recording by Andras Schiff and a CD version of Gould’s Book 2. Both are piano performances.

To my ears, both of these recordings are lovely. I find Schiff’s stylings more conventional. Gould’s attack is more percussive with extensive use of staccato. Again, I haven’t heard enough performances of these works to critique them (unlike Handel’s Messiah, of which I’ve purchase my 7^th recording). I’m sure I’ll be coming back to these CDs again and again, since, like the Grand Canyon, there’s just too much to take in in one sitting.