Re: How did you first learn of Glenn Gould?

["Bradley Lehman" <bpl@umich.edu>]

> When did you first hear *of* (or read about) Glenn Gould?
>
> If it wasn't the same time you heard Glenn Gould, when did you first hear
> his music?
>
> What was your first reaction?

It was records.  LP's.  My parents had about 50 classical records, and I
devoured those, but there was no GG.

When I was about 15 (c1979) I discovered that I was allowed to check out
LP's on my public library card, and I soon started taking out everything
they had in the classical section.  Near the front of the bin,
alphabetically, they had the boxed set of GG playing the Bach Partitas.
Upon hearing this I suddenly learned that Bach was fun; the music really had
a lilt and GG's playing was so carefree and airy.  I bought a portable
cassette
recorder, plugged it into my parents' stereo, and made my own copy of this
so I could listen to it whenever I wanted...finding something new in it each
time.  It was especially good just before going to sleep.

Liking the Partitas, I also took out the other GG albums the library had:
the Beethoven concertos box, part of the WTC 2, the organ record of the Art
of Fugue 1-9, and the French Suites 5/6 with the French Ouverture.  I
probably wore out the library's copy of the Beethovens and the WTC 2.  I
didn't so much care for the way he played the Art of Fugue or those French
Suites...those performances didn't seem to have the flow of the Partitas,
and they seemed weird to me.  More than 20 years later I still don't like
them, now having more concrete reasons for what I sensed instinctively back
then, but reasons are not important when a kid is just getting to know the
music for the first time.  The pieces seemed fine, and I started playing
them myself, but I didn't like the way GG played them.  Still, none of this
dampened my enthusiasm for his Partitas set.  That set and the experience of
starting to play WTC 1 for myself convinced me that I wanted to specialize
in Bach rather than playing so much later piano music anymore.  (The later
step was to quit piano altogether and switch to harpsichord and organ,
because Bach makes more natural sense that way, but that's a different
story.)

The public library also had a deluxe book of photos and essays about GG.  I
think it was the McGreevy.  I read that many times and thought the variety
of things said about him was fascinating.  I photocopied the picture of GG
playing a duet with his dog Nicky.

I loved that wacko cadenza in Beethoven 1, and played just that section over
and over.  (Years later somebody showed me that the cadenza was published in
_Contemporary Keyboard_ magazine, and I had to go play through it for
myself.)

Soon after those first library experiences I convinced my aunt to give her
copies of the '55 Goldbergs and the Beethoven/Liszt fifth symphony to me,
since she didn't listen to them much herself.  The '55 Goldbergs had what I
heard in the Partitas: supreme musicality, and (as it said on the cover)
"delight in speeding like the wind."  The Beethoven/Liszt had all those
funny pseudo-articles on the back cover, and the playing was pretty exciting
too.  She also gave me "Switched-Off Bach," which was Columbia's compilation
of acoustic performances of the pieces from "Switched-On Bach" (and in the
same order, and with a very similar cover).  I enjoyed the GG performances
of some WTC 1 excerpts on there.  At her house I listened to the
"Appassionata" sonata and didn't ask her to give me that one; I *knew* there
was something wrong with it.  (She gave it to me anyway years later.)

When I started buying my own records (wanting to hear more than the library
had to offer) a fairly early purchase was the WTC 1 box, filling out what
Switched-Off Bach had started.  Then our high school senior class took a bus
trip to Toronto, fall of 1981.  GG was of course still alive.  I went to
Eaton's and bought a GG-style beret as a souvenir of the building where he
recorded.  I went to Sam the Record Man and was stunned by the huge
selection of records, and bought as many as I could afford (I forget what I
bought).  I went to some other big shop there on Yonge St and they had big
posters of GG the local hero everywhere.  All my classmates thought Toronto
was cool because it was such a nifty cultural city; I thought it was cool
because GG lived there.  I still have that GG beret.

But the flood really started when I got to college the next year and started
working at the radio station: with their Columbia subscription they had
almost every GG album ever issued.  I went to those like a cat to catnip.
Standouts among those were the Wagner piano record, the Hindemith records,
and the Byrd/Gibbons.  "Enoch Arden" was amusing.  The Bach viola da gamba
suites (with Leonard Rose on cello) were *so* weird that they ceased being
merely weird and turned into delightfully weird.  But I didn't like the
English Suites or the violin sonatas with Laredo.  The Handel record was
horrible harpsichord playing, but fun.  I thought the last three Beethoven
sonatas were wonderful the way GG played them.  The Berg and Schoenberg were
remarkably approachable.

The first time I heard GG's voice was in about 1982 or maybe early 1983,
when I checked out the _Piano Quarterly_ issue that had the plastic
soundsheet of GG and Tim Page rehashing the '81 Goldbergs.  GG had just died
recently.  On the soundsheet I thought he sounded weird.  Who was this
oddball speaking in such an affected manner?  Surely not the same GG who had
played so naturally 25 years earlier....  I listened to the '81 Goldbergs
record itself and frankly didn't like it; too weird and affected, like the
French Suites.  (But the proportional tempo ideas were interesting.)  I
began to realize that it's possible for one's musical hero to have gone
downhill instead of getting better.  I listened to the Brahms ballades and
rhapsodies: so grim!  (But I still like them for other reasons.)

I'm glad that my first exposure to GG's performances was catching him at his
best: the Partitas.  Those were recorded before I was born, and GG's Bach
hadn't lost its flow yet.  I'm also glad the public library's record
collection was enough behind the times to shelter me from GG's newest work
at the time.  If my first exposure to GG had been, say, the English Suites
or the first four of the French Suites, I might not have ever listened to
any more GG.

Is there anybody here whose first exposure to GG was the Salzburg Recital
disc?  That would be I think the very best way to make a good first
impression.  The best of the four Goldbergs, the obscure but delightful
Sweelinck piece, some remarkably coherent Schoenberg, and well-shaped
graceful Mozart that doesn't go by too quickly.  Essential.  Music doesn't
get
much better than that.

Bradley Lehman, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
Dayton VA