Rosen

[Allan MacLeod <allan.macleod@usask.ca>]

The Rosen article in the New York Review that has been discussed already
several times is worth looking at for many reasons.  I found the discussion
on what exactly "touch" means quite enlightening.  But some of Rosen's
ideas might also explain why Gould's fame seems to continue to increase
while so many of his contemporaries seem to be becoming forgotten. 
Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that Gould and Horowitz were the
two titans of North American pinao playing in mid-century and that Horowitz
is being relegated to the museum whereas  Gould continues to live. 
The reason, I think, is that Gould gave up performing in public for good
and thus concentrated on recording performances that would be valued for
their sound and not the theatrics of the performance.  Rosen, a pianist
himself, accepts that piano playing is theatrical, a sport, with a high
visual element to it.  He claims that people used to stand up to watch
Horowitz play the thundering parallel octaves of Liszt and company and
that pianists get very physically involved with their playing.  I've
never been ashamed to admit that attending a live performance is something
like going to a circus--will the tenor hit the high C? will the pianist
navigate a diffcult passage?  I once saw Hollander perform the Gershwin
piano concerto and at the end of the first movement I marvelled that the
piano had not been reduced to a smoking ruin.  It was spectactular
and like most others in the audience it seemed that there was nothing to
do but applaud the first movement performance (it really goes against all
instincts not to aplaud after the first movement of Tchaikovsky's first
as well).  Horowitz specialized in the spectacular and kept his audience
by periodically making comebacks.  But 10 years after his passing,
he is a museum piece.  Pletnev, for one, has more than compensated
for Horowitz' passing.  But Gould built his reputation not on the
visual spectacle, but on thoughtful performances which challenge us continually
to this day.  His interest in technology also ensured that his recording
sound was always of the best quality (although obviously most of the credit
here belongs to the CBS producers and engineers) and transferred well to
CD.
    I have been listening to quite a few of the Great
Pianists artists and Gould really does stand out among many of them for,
of all things, the subtelty of his dynamics.  For reasons Rosen explains,
Gould did not excel at tonal colour (because he disliked the padal so much),
but what comes as a surprise is the dynamic variations, which seem to me
to be unique.  For many artists there is fff and ppp, but Gould operated
at all levels in between.
    Rosen makes one unfair comment.  He refers
to a rumour that one performance of the Liszt sonata has the pianist playing
the right hand part with both hands while her husband played the
left hand part (during the thundering parallel octaves).   This
sounds as if it must have been Argerich.  Can anyone suggest who else
it might have been? If it was not Argerich, it is rather unkind of Rosen
to mention it as she is the most likely candidate.
        Allan