GG: the "false" 1981 Goldbergs

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@UMICH.EDU>]

Iori Fujita asked:
>Moreover we should not take Glenn Gould back to the analog age.
>He for the first time in the world tried to do totally digital recording
>with the Goldberg Variations. Why do we need a subtly more comfortable
>piano sound? Gould was satisfied with the digital sound, wasn't he?
>The new false 81 version is a shame.


And yesterday I pointed out the vast improvements in sound in this new
issue, where they've gone back to the analog masters that were recorded
simultaneously with the digital tapes.  I suggest that this new "false 81
version" (as Iori has put it) is closer to Gould's intentions, certainly
in theory and perhaps also in practice, than anything we've heard before.

If anything "false" has been going around, it is the harsh-sounding DDD
CD, CBS Masterworks MK 37779!  (But it's been with us so long, so
familiar, that it hardly seems false.)  The piano's tone is garish and
harsh, especially in the loud passages.  I bought the LP in 1985 and the
CD and the video later.  And despite attempts to enjoy all three of those,
I've spent most of the past 17 years disliking this "performance"...it has
sounded so ugly, more astringent than listenable.  It's an austere
interpretation to begin with: championing rational control over natural
flow, intellect over intuition or instinct.  That artificial austerity
holds the music at a distance, and until now the unbelievable sound
quality has compounded the problem.  This whole thing was too-obvious
artifice, eschewing all spontaneity.  (The "interview" with Tim Page to
promote this new recording was similarly un-spontaneous, scripted by
Gould.)  If the sound at least had some warmth to it, I would have had
more tolerance for that artificiality, because his approach is interesting
and challenging.  But, personally, I've always found this "performance"
more off-putting than engaging; sometimes even infuriating.  What happened
to beauty, or to intuitive flow?  Now I'm beginning to realize how much
the sound quality affected my perception....

Gould said he listened to his 1955 recording shortly before going in to
record the 1981 version, and no longer recognized the "spirit" behind it.
He was glad to be doing it again because in the interim he had remade
himself into a different artist, with different priorities.  (Young Gould,
as heard in the 1954, 1955, and especially the live 1959 Salzburg
recordings of this piece, was a marvelously instinctive musician, with a
gorgeous tone and a natural flair for dynamic and rhythmic nuance.  In his
later career, though, he replaced those qualities in himself, no longer
trusting them.  It is no wonder that he hardly recognized his earlier
spirit anymore.)

See the chapter about the 1981 recording in Otto Friedrich's book, _Glenn
Gould: A Life and Variations_.  Co-producer Samuel Carter describes the
sessions which were on April 22, 23, 24 and May 12, 13, 14 of 1981.
Digital recording was in its infancy, and the producers and engineers had
very limited time either to learn or use the editing facilities: there
simply weren't many machines available.  From the recording sessions,
Glenn Gould took home the analog tapes and did the production work of
designing an editing plan.  He then negotiated with Carter which edits
were and were not feasible using digital procedures; some of Gould's first
choices were *not* available.  (This is corroborated by the score excerpts
in the "State of Wonder" package, where Carter's penciled notes show that
Gould asked for things that cannot be done, things Carter needed to
explain to him.)

Friedrich also cites Gould (from a _People_ magazine interview) in
comments about the Goldberg Variations, compositionally: he thought the
work was "oversold," in parts "capricious and silly and dull," and "as a
concept, I don't really think it quite works."

So, what do we have here?  We have Gould recording a piece of music that
he didn't fully believe in or find convincing.  To make it work, he
imposed on it an experimental approach where he tried to unify the "pulse"
across many variations.  He recorded it one variation at a time (as noted
by Carter), and did his production work at home with the analog tapes
trying to build a convincing structure.

The film version and the audio-only version are not exactly the same
(Carter explains this).  Gould was most meticulous about the audio-only
version.  Gould was well aware that the picture distracts a
viewer/listener away from full attention to the sound, and therefore not
all the details had to be as precisely controlled as they would be for the
LP.

This new reissue goes back to the analog tapes, the ones Gould worked with
at home, and rebuilds the recording from that plus his editing intentions
(as marked in his editing score, Gould thinking as a producer).  They
loaded these tapes into a modern digital system that does allow the edits
he wanted, and they have performed those edits to the best of their
ability.  And it sounds terrific!  It's a revelation.  This new reissue
is, frankly, a different performance to join the others we know: it gives
us a glimpse into his ideas that in 1981-82 were not technologically
possible yet in digital production.  And it suggests that Gould was *not*
necessarily wholly satisfied with the ugly sound of the digital version;
he may have simply put up with it as an unavoidable loss.  Digital was the
fad, and it did eliminate tape hiss; a trade-off, one artificiality
(unrealistic piano tone) for another (goodbye hiss).

As David Pelletier has pointed out (and as confirmed by my own memory),
consumer CD players were not widely available until 1983.  I don't think
that any of Gould's recordings, whether old or new, were ever available on
CD during his lifetime.  (It's possible that they were, but I haven't seen
any evidence that they were.)  The consumer product here was the vinyl
record, along with the film version.  Not CDs, and not home video!  Those
of us who know this performance inside and out have been studying it so
long from these distorted versions, it's hard to keep the perspective of
the original design in mind.

In this new "A State of Wonder" issue, at least the piano now sounds like
a real Yamaha, and we can now focus on other aspects of this
"performance."  It's still completely artificial, but at least now it's
much easier on the ears!  The convenience of the CD format makes it easy
to study the sound of those analog tapes, the most direct link (so far) to
Gould's conception of this project.

And this issue shows that Gould did *not* turn his back on sensuously
beautiful sound as a worthy musical goal.  Frankly, this new issue is
starting to renew some of my long-lost faith in Gould's musicianship;
those all-digital issues from his last years (not only this Bach, but also
the Strauss and Brahms) have sounded so distorted that I have wondered
what happened to natural beauty in Gould's work.  The sound quality itself
made his piano-playing sound rough and uncaring, brusque, unfeeling.
It's a relief to hear now that perhaps he wasn't that way after all.


Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl  or  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl

"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot