It may be that the best way to experience late Canadian pianist Glenn Gould is to listen to one of his classic Bach recordings straight through, for in addition to his distinctive, not to say quirky approach to local textures, he was a formidable architectural thinker. Gould has receded far enough into the past, however, that there must be a sizable contingent of potential buyers for this Essential Glenn Gould collection. There are a lot of famous Gould recordings on here, humming and all. Read Full BioIt may be that the best way to experience late Canadian pianist Glenn Gould is to listen to one of his classic Bach recordings straight through, for in addition to his distinctive, not to say quirky approach to local textures, he was a formidable architectural thinker. Gould has receded far enough into the past, however, that there must be a sizable contingent of potential buyers for this Essential Glenn Gould collection. There are a lot of famous Gould recordings on here, humming and all. The question is whether the 50/50 Bach/non-Bach division (the first CD is all Bach, the second devoted to other composers) is the right one for this collection. Gould's Bach was idiosyncratic but widely thought brilliant. The same is not true for his readings of other composers, which start at idiosyncratic and decline to downright insulting. There is no reason to include Gould's recording of Mozart's Piano Sonata in C major, K. 545, in a set of this kind; Gould himself said that he recorded Mozart only to show that Mozart died not too soon but too late. His Scarlatti, also marked by dislike, is hardly more listenable, and even with Beethoven there are few who would call Gould's readings essential. Not all is lost on disc two, however; Haydn, curiously, receives more respectful treatment, and Gould, who was full of surprises, deliverd several in the form of little-known pieces that one would never have expected him to record. Especially intriguing is the set of Variations chromatiques of Bizet, which achieves an unsuspected rhapsodic intensity in Gould's hands; the little piece from Sibelius' Kyllikki is another mostly forgotten find. The Bach side is fine, with a complete Italian Concerto, reasonable representations of the small keyboard works that were essential components of the classical listener's living room in the 1960s and a good chunk of the recording that made Gould famous, the 1955 version of the Goldberg Variations, BWV 988. (The aria theme from Gould's valedictory 1981 re-recording of the piece bookends the Bach program.) It may be that a 75/25 proportion would have allowed for some more extended Bach excerpts. But it's also true that Gould was nothing if not outrageous and that a basic collection of his music should embody that aspect of his personality. Informative notes are in English and French, and the remastering, aided by the fact that Gould's recordings were obsessively produced in the first place, is smooth.
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Goldberg Variations BWV 988: Aria
Glenn Gould Lyrics
Instrumental
To comment on specific lyrics, highlight them
Vivian Tristesse
So, I've been listening to this for hours on repeat.
I feel that "I" am an unknowable entity spectating a bizarre space through an odd lens. What is this lens? I'm not sure. Through the most immediately salient component, I am told that I detect only the radiant energy that was not absorbed or perfectly transmitted on its path from its source. Instead of observing the photons to glean what they can tell me, I "see" 'stuff'. There appears to be a computer in front of me because the 'lens,' in this iteration, developed to only detect certain components of radiant energy and to use these to create a useful illusion that it fools me into believing. Useful. For what? To flex muscles in appropriate combinations to 'procure' that which the lens has defined as necessary with the carrot of pleasure and the whip of pain (enigmas in and of themselves). No. To generate a further set of hallucinations--- a few modulations of my pressure parameters and particle energies-- that leads me to believe that I have procured something of value.
"But surely you need the necessities, like food and water." The lens threatens with the whip of death. I don't know death, or that I indeed exist. Is death the one and only absolute-- the sole exception to the rule-- that can be perceived without contrast? If there is "no light without dark," what can cast a shadow on death? We know of it only indirectly, because sometimes there is 'not life.' I am taught to believe that I am an iteration of a several-billion-year-old pattern of energy movement, but I do not know what "energy" is. I know only what the lens tells me. The lens whispers to me that I will take for granted my physical faculties until I lose, say, pronation of my lateral left upper extremity. "Look at what torture simply not being able to do this brings." But what of those creatures that never had an extremity to pronate?
I don't want to be aware of all this. I just want to "live my life," whatever that means. The lens tells me that the phrase means "to exist for a time in a variety of tableaux created by me (the lens) but which you will attribute in part to external 'things', even though you know that the only 'things' you have access to are the illusions I create, until the illusions stop and 'you' are rearranged into some other lenses or not." Yes, the lens tells me that I am the lens. I'm "ideospectatory." How quaint.
It's awfully tiresome. I can't even write about or communicate it adequately because communication presumes that there is something to be said and something to say it with.
Roger Elliot
"Ready when you are, Sgt. Pembry"
Bernard Molan
😆
Juan David Reina
Nunca me cansare de escuchar repetidamente esta melancólica melodía, llena de una hermosura única y que mueve lo mas profundo de mi ser!
H. K. Lee
I always will love Glenn’s remarkable performance with his singing along. It makes his work more excellent!!
AN 69
Get you someone who could treat yo D, the way my boi's fingers treat them keys. Such Angelic sounds and fingers!
Misogynist thinker
timeless and beautiful
noharu
His late cadences be playing with my emotions. Heard a section of this song from Gaspar Noe's Love off Netflix lol.
backtobach25932
Gorgeous what a legacy - the tears fall
thomas brunner
Yes - we (music students) were listening to this record in the early eighties and were so stunned that we had to hear it again and again - the legacy has remained the most moving recording of this late work of the inconceivable Bach to this day...
David Rauh
Experimental, but great!