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Re: GG...and that harpsichord
At 06:10 PM 7/9/2000 +0000, Kate Clunies-Ross wrote:
Oh dear....Can I now horrify everyone and say that I actually enjoy
listening to this particular recording? (well, occasionally!)
Well, I too have the (guilty) pleasure of listening to it occasionally,
too. Mostly as a novelty. That opening movement of the A major suite is
from some strange planet. (And part of GG's manuscript of it is reproduced
in Bazzana's book!) It's not quite as much fun as Dick Hyman's 1966 pop
harpsichord album "Happening!" (see
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~rcb/light/indexjs.htm?details/rs899.htm), but
it's in that genre. GG's Handel is perhaps (at least in part) playing
right along with the popularity of pop harpsichord in the 1960's to early
1970's. It was the "in" thing to do.
And I can't help but think that GG's interpretations here have something to
do with the simultaneity (early 1972) of working on the soundtrack of
Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five." Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time, just
as GG's two hands are in that A major prelude. On the planet Tralfamadore,
linear time has no meaning. GG delivers a Tralfamadorian performance of
Handel during the period when he's most closely involved with the
film. Coincidence?
GG was also at the time lamenting the recent fatal wounding of his beloved
piano, CD 318. So it goes.
Yes, I have heard these criticisms before, and I must admit that when I
first heard the CD I thought it was far and away one of the wierdest
"harpsichord" recordings I had ever heard (I actually thought that the
'rubbery' sound you describe didn't sound like a harpsichord at all). But
then...I began to enjoy it. Yup, its certainly not one of Goulds greater
efforts in the recording studio. But he sounds as if he"s having fun... not
to mention making a (metaphorical) rude gesture in the direction of those
critics that he was usually pleased to ignore.
Agreed!
The recording makes me smile even if I can't take it seriously.
OK, I am no scholar, nor do I claim any great musical expertise. Bradley,
you are no doubt tearing your hair with despair that an f_minor subscriber
is so hopelessly uncritical. I will go and sit in a corner and cover my head
with my hands in shame while everyone yells abuse at me.
Nah. I keep my hair short enough that it's not tearable.
I expect this has probably been asked before (that is, before I subscribed
to F_minor): What other Gould recordings do people actually like, even
though they reduced the critics to stunned disbelief?
The Dispassionata.
Bradley Lehman
Dayton VA
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl