Search - Johann Sebastian Bach, Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Golschmann :: Bach: Three Keyboard Concertos

Bach

T. R. Wilson | 08/04/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Glenn Gould is singular. His playing is immediately recognizable, rife with highly specific characteristics and style that mark his every recording, yet I find it impossible, after many attempts, to recreate, even remotely, a close imitation of his playing. Nor have I heard anyone who can.



I did my undergraduate study in piano performance with Edward Kilenyi, and Bach was a constant in the repetory. Kilenyi's Bach was brilliant; the closest currently performing pianist to whom I might compare his Bach would be Andras Schiff, but only from a long view.



Kilenyi discouraged us from listening to recordings of other pianists, but I have since done a lot of comparison listening, enjoying very much Schiff, Hewitt, the older Richter and great Tureck recordings, among others. I find in those plenty of material I would consider recommending to a student for acquiring some ideas for sound interpretation of Bach, but Gould is another matter altogether. His singularity and the immense power of his personality are impossible to seperate from the playing, and I feel I am not just hearing as much Gould as I am Bach, and while I find the experience variously utterly ravishing, enthralling, thrilling, startling, haunting, well, you get it, the adjectives could go on and on.



I think it is valuable to listen to Gould because he plays from the perspective of making the music totally his own, without regard to the zeitgeist of interpretation, the particular popular movements of musical tastes; I find something pure and magical in his work. It simply must stand on its own as not necessarily Bach but Bach/Gould.



Thus my experience of Gould's "The Art of the Fugue" and all his recordings.



I have two other recordings of "The Art", valuable in and of themselves: Allesandro Rinaldi and The Canadian Brass. The Rinaldi is my favorite, overall, but all three are well worth study, each bringing to this glorious, ceaselessly fascinating work a certain illumination that makes them well worth comparative listening.



I could not possibly appreciate this masterpiece without the score, and the Dover edition is excellent; it is written out in full score, full-sized, and beneath each stave is a two-stave reduction in smaller print.



Would love to get feedback and have discussion on my review; as I am passionately in love with this work of Bach.



T Wilson"