have not made meaningful contributions to the genre of Bach recordings at all. Their list, 90% Anglocentric, reads almost as if the Italians, the French, the Dutch, the Germans, Czech, or Japanese etc. And indeed, when they published a “ 10 Best Bach Recordings” list early last year, they topped it in such a ridiculous way that it needed soft rebutting which I hope to provide hereby. “Proximity bias” or “mere exposure effect” might be the appropriate euphemism for them being unabashed homers.
I'd just love to hear it as Gould imagined it rather than as it was captured, not as a replacement necessarily, but as a companion.In my time as a clerk at Tower Records, we would sometimes make fun of Gramophone Magazine’s rather obvious pro-English biases. Listened to at low volumes, I can still do that with Gould's later recordings, but if the piece is played loudly enough to make the piano's voicing and dynamics distinctive, then the voice-over clouds the texture. (Or, I guess, you can sort of Necker between the two if you can't quite hit the enlightenment listning.) That was where Gould blew the "reference" Landowska out of the water in '55 (she played a much more "chorded" performance).
It's not that I avoid Gould (or suggest anyone else does)-in fact I've got his entire Bach catalog and love it (Beethoven and Sibelius, not so much)-but one of the immense pleasures of listening to Bach in any form, and particularly in Gould's performances, is that one can listen to the whole of a piece and follow the voices individually at the same time. It bothered him that the non-Bachness of his singing has to be recorded along with what Bach wrote.) (Note that he's doing a sort of meta-riff much of the time rather than simply singing along with his playing. Gould did, but found that they had become such an intrinsic part of his learning of the piece that he was unable to play to his satisfaction without vocalizing. As for greatest pianist of the 20th century, let's be honest: Rubinstein and Horowitz were both better pianists and incomparably better musicians.Įxcept that Jarrett did not, himself, want to get rid of the vocalizations. Look at the Goldberg recordings on harpsichord by Wanda Landowska (my favorite) and Anthony Newman for much, much better renditions than Gould. As for his messing with tuning and his piano, he was largely an eccentric crank who pretended that no one else was doing that, had been doing that, and was doing a better job than him. His voicing ranges from pedestrian to wrong. His tempos are often so bizarrely fast or slow that the music is lost (particularly in the two and three part inventions). However, I'm confused why Gould came up at all, since his recordings of Bach are lousy. I'm a violinist, not a pianist, so I don't know the Goldberg inside and out the way I do the Sonatas and Partitas. My gripes are tiny, things like in variation 13, I'd love to hear a little more leading through the phrase with the pedal, but honestly, that would probably break something else in the phrasing. The voicing is very clear, the touch light, and the phrasing clear.
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