Glenn Gould - The Alchemist

Rating:
Summary: Great playing, interesting discussions,limited sound quality
Review: A couple of months after Gould's untimely dead, Dutch tv broadcasted Gould's three Bach commentaries, that have appeared on Sony video and a compilation of fragments from Monsaigeon "Chemins de la musique" triptych. Since that compilation did not include Gould's second recording of Bach 6th Partita this dvd folowed 20 years of eager anticipation.

This dvd contains a program from the seventies that "re-introduced" the retired "studio pianist" Glenn Gould to his record buying audience. It contains quite a bit of music varying from Gibbons and Byrd all the way to Schoenberg and extensive interviews exploring music and life in general according to GG. For all contemporary fans a lot of the material that comes up in the interviews may be somewhat outdated. Gould maniac as I am, listening to his commentaries on Bach in the three aforementioned videos is a never ending pleasure, whereas the skip button is my most common antidote to repeated encounter with "Gould on Gould". Yet, the dvd gives invaluable insight in the Gould recording process and his fascination with its possibilities.

For me though, the inclusion of a complete second version of Bach's sixth Partita is this disc's raison d'etre. Glenn's ultra-dramatic first version from the late fifties is still among his best Bach recordings and made you wander how he would have done things differently later. Whereas Gould fan and admiree Alexis Weissenberg went all out on his Dg rerecording of Bach's greatest keyboard suite, Glenn chose a definitely more spiritual approach for his second recording of a trip through one of the worlds most amazing chromatic labyrinths. Detractors could comment that some of his articulations in the Toccata may be questionable, yet a "deeper" view of this work and it's composer is unbeknownst to me. This spiritual approach is maintained throughout the work in pretty normal tempos, including the gigue where Gould -in a way similar to Pollini's recent release of Beethoven's Appassionata- proves that top-speed is in no way a prerequisite for the ultimate virtuosity. While nobody will be surprised by Gould's unmatched skills in counterpoint playing, it is really interesting to have taped testimonial of Glenn's abundant right pedal use. While it is most abundant in the Allemande and the no holds barred Sarabande, even the faster movements get an ample dose of sustain.

For all true blue Gould fans this disc is a must have. We have all learned to take Glenn's statements with a grain of salt. In the introduction a lot is talked about the pianists reasons for leaving the concert stage. One thing many people -including my former teacher who saw Gould around the end of his concert career in Brussels- noticed is that his on stage memory had become so unreliable, that he had to rely on large patches of reduced photocopies of entire works. Yet, let's not get lost in details.

My only qualm with this issue is the outdated sound quality. Used to the quality of the three Bach issues on Sony it is too bad that things were not improved upon with current technology.

Rating:
Summary: Good Stuff for Gould's Fans
Review: This is a rather long DVD with a running time of 157 min. Roughly we have 1/3 of the time with Gould on the piano and the rest are just chats/talks. Whether the chats are interesting depend on how we look at them. On this occasion, Gould is more polite and more pleasing in the sense that he was more aware of the camera and the viewers behind the camera. On the other hand, he is not as candid as he was on Goldberg.

In this DVD, we also have a director. So the photography is not as dull as Goldberg and to a certain extent quite artistic, especially when he is on the piano. One of the most appealing sights of this DVD would be his fingerworks as filmed right above his hands: it looks as though the ten fingers were ten little dancers (with Horowitz, we have ten horses racing together).

Gould had a way of making the piano sounds more like harpsichord than a modern piano, and that supposedly had something to do with the position he sat himself before the piano making his arms so low. The recording session of the English Suite, other than Gibbons, is one of the best that this DVD has to offer, but that is only an excerpt showing instead what he was seeking in his recording. Fortunately, we have a whole piece of Partita #6, a piece that some would regard as less appealing than his English Suite.

As to his chats, for those other than Gould's fans, they would rather the director/producer edite it or trim it making it more compact. But for Gould fans, they sure would long for more whatever they may be. Fortunately, we have a choice: we can select the music programme instead of having to undergo all the chats everytime before we have the music.

The "bonus" hasn't any substance at all. Such kind of trial started in the 1930s when a piano teacher tried to film famous pianists' hands to be replayed in normal and slow actions to unveil the "secret" of piano playing in order "to save years of hard practice": a most futile attempt.