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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This work cannot be summarised with a "tagline", 22 Mar 2007
I love Bach's music, and generally insist on two things; firstly, that it is played a little slower than we are generally served it; and secondly that it is played on the instruments it was written for. When I first heard Glenn Gould's 1981 recording, I realised how ridiculous that second requirement was, and how important that first requirement was. The music on this album just swept me away. There is no other recording of the Goldberg Variations that I've listened to that even comes close to it.
The technical mastery of Gould goes without saying, but what really struck me with this recording was the spirit with which this music is played - the feeling which Gould breathes into the work. This is most evident in the slower pieces, particularly the opening Aria, which take you on a journey of the most exquisite emotions. In almost every variation, Gould picks you up and takes you where he is going with it.
I lack the words to describe it - words ike "subliminal", "instropective" come to mind, and above all "human". Bach can be played very mechanically, but not here. Complimented by Gould's ghostly humming, occasionally rising to the level of audibility, Aria, and Canone della Quinta sound like they come straight from the soul. This music lifts you into another world.
Not once does he use the pedals.
This is just mind-blowing - buy it!
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30 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
THE FI IS TOO HI, 3 Oct 2005
Before we even get to the performance, this is a rather odd production in two ways. The first oddity is that a short description of each variation goes across the display on one's cd unit, rather like the news and stock-market announcements in Times Square, before settling back to the normal display of cd-number, track-number and time taken. These abbreviated descriptions are only what we can read perfectly well from the back of the box - indeed they're not even that because they get truncated to the right. When it comes to the canons this docks them of the significant distinction among the canons, namely the pitch-intervals at which the canons are set, (4th, 5th, octave etc). Even with the 'normal' variations all that either the box or the display tells us is the number of keyboards that Bach specifies for each, which is relevant only to a harpsichord and not to a piano. The other unusual extra is much more important. After the performance ends the theme starts again but taken much faster. This is Gould himself in his 1955 performance, and it leads in a discussion with the critic Tim Page. I was completely fascinated to hear one of the 20th century's greatest players tell us so much about his thinking. Gould comes across as not only intellectual but as friendly and affable. There are background issues mentioned, and I was more than pleased to find that he shares my own thorough dislike of the minimalist school, but the main topics are central to the work on the disc - the questions of tempo, of expression, and of how to play Bach on the piano. Gould takes the theme very slowly indeed here, and while I like it to be slow I'm not sure I want it quite this slow. In general he is more measured than in 1955, although not to the degree he is in the theme, and this time he observes some of the repeats. The playing, technically speaking, is as super-perfect as ever, with all his familiar ultra-precision in the ornaments and ultra-clarity in the runs. This performance doesn't have quite the verve of 1955, but there's plenty of that left. In the matter of expression the interlocutors take Gould's reading of the famous 25th variation from 1955, and the maestro likens it to a performance of a Chopin nocturne. The new Mr Gould wants no more of that and goes much straighter in this account. For what it's worth my own feeling is that I can take it either way - what I'm not so convinced by is the general thinking behind the change. Gould draws a parallel with the Art of Fugue, and I'm decidedly on his side in not wanting over-expressed readings of that. I doubt all the same whether parallel holds with the Goldberg variations. These show much more of Bach's human face and were written to be entertainment, albeit pretty lofty and intellectual entertainment. There is more than one Bach, and the new performance, for me, lacks some of the eventfulness of its predecessor. I think that what really goes slightly wrong (by Gould's transcendent standards) this time is actually where his thinking about piano performances of Bach have led him. I couldn't agree more that instruments are there to support, express and serve music, and that the same music can work perfectly well on many different sorts of instruments. What doesn't seem to me to follow from that is that music written specifically for one instrument, in this case the harpsichord, can just be 'walked' on to another, even so closely related an instrument as the piano. In 1955 Gould seemed to me to solve the issue brilliantly. He exploited in that performance the additional resources of the modern grand with imagination and discretion, and even varied his reading with some highly original and witty semi-imitations of harpsichord effects. This time round his playing, although clean, lithe and spare as ever, seems to assume that nothing is needed except to play the work as if it had been written for the instrument he's playing, which of course it wasn't. There are dozens and scores of different ways of approaching the matter, but a completely literal translation doesn't convince as being one of them. The problem is actually emphasised by the excellent recorded quality - this is how a piano ought to sound, and it just makes me the more conscious that the clothes don't quite fit. Fidelity is great, and this may be the first time I have felt it can actually be overdone, or not done in quite the right way.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magical, 9 Aug 2008
Glenn Gould is simply the master of this set, and in my opinion, this is the greatest recording ever made, even the 1955 doesnt come close.
its not the velocity of the recording that makes it magical, but rather the passion with which the music is performed.
and no, gould's voice doesnt bother me at all, in fact, it adds to the uniqueness of the recording.
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~ Glenn Gould
~ Johann Sebastian Bach
~ Glenn Gould
~ Johann Sebastian Bach
