I never thought this would happen

[fpb]

I shut down a CD half-way through. I shut it down because I could not stomach the music; and the music, if you please, was Beethoven's Piano Sonata op.57, the Appassionata.

The trouble is that it was played by Glenn Gould. Now I have heard GG perfomances that I liked, but this one can only be described as perverse. It was incredibly long, but that was the least of it; it was long because every figure, every passage, every note, was lingered on to an incredible extent. Trills, which are meant to trill if not to thrill, were practically broken apart into their component sounds. background figures which only serve to make the foreground stand out were brought to the forefront and treated like main themes. Over the whole performance hung a mephitic cloud of intellectual vanity. Worst of all, he makes it boring; and that is the one thing Beethoven never is. ,.

Comments

[un-crayon-rouge.livejournal.com]

I've made the decision to only listen to Genn Gould performing Bach. You can't go wrong there. I believe he secretly hated everything that was not Bach anyway.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I never heard him play Bach in this kind of perverse way.

[un-crayon-rouge.livejournal.com]

I once made the mistake of listening to the only recording GG ever made of a piece by Mozart. I can't remember what piece it was, only that it made me feel very bad, and that's when I made my decision.

[joetexx.livejournal.com]

I've never heard anything by Gould but the Goldberg, and only part of that.
Some years back Kevin Grace did a brief article and exchange with readers about Gould -

http://web.archive.org/web/20021012052417/report.ca/archive/report/20020923/p25i020923f.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20060109170320/http://www.theambler.com/nov6-15_02.htm#gould

Defending himself from a charge of ignorance of his suject, Mr Grace wrote:

As it turns out, I know rather a lot about Gould. I own 20 of his CDs. Mostly J.S. Bach, of course, but also Bizet, the Elizabethans, Grieg, Haydn, Sibelius, Richard Strauss and Wagner. (No Mozart, Beethoven or Brahms—I’m not a masochist.)

From what little I know of the Gould cult and Gould's life I think he may be right that GG has become a "Sacred Monster"

On a pleasant note I have heard all four of the Leonore overtures this week
for the first time since adolescence.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Very interesting, but, unlike this gentleman, I AM going to argue for Beethoven. Beethoven. R. Emmett Tyrrell admits he was a lout, an egomaniac and a "cad"â”"but then there is the matter of art." Was he really? If he had been what Mr.Grace calls him, how would you explain his lifelong loyal friends? How would you explain that even people, like Maelzel, who had been really hurt by one of his bursts of uncontrolled temper, went back to him afterwards? Beethoven was clearly a damaged man, and given his terrible childhood and his crushing misfortunes in love, that is hadly to be surprised; but "a cad"? If you read Salomon's revealing account of his love for Antonie Brentano, he turns out to be as far from a cad as it is very well possible to be. In fact, the story does honour to both. He was, of course, a very sharp dealer with printers and impresarios, but if you have any idea of how these people behaved to artists you would realize that it was diamond cut diamond. He had been in the business since his teens, and he knew them. And he was generous to a fault, giving his money to good causes and setting up charity concerts on his own initiative and at a moment's notice. An egomaniac? Nonsense. If you have any idea of how the Romantic age thought fit to speak of genius, what he is supposed to have said of himself - and the most excessive statements, those of Bettina Brentano, were almost certainly false - becomes the common currency. Take away the ordinary currency of an age with no restraint, and what is left is merely the views of a man with a justifiable confidence in his own talent (and hard work), and in fact with a highly self-critical attitude. Having once been told that it must be wonderful not to have to be ashamed of anything he'd written, he answered something like: "Ah, but I am! If it were up to me, I'd burn dozens of my published work." Yes, Beethoven's manners were often deplorable, his rages sudden and unjust, his behaviour uncontrolled; all that we should expect from an abused child with a drunken father. But people put up with it because they knew that he really did have the heart of gold some people only pretend.