Glenn Gould: A State of Wonder
(The Complete Goldberg Variations 1955 & 1981)
Sony Classical/Legacy S3K 87703
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 In 1955,
22-year-old Glenn Gould exploded onto the international classical music scene with his
incandescent interpretation of Bach's Goldberg Variations. It's difficult today to
describe the impact that recording had on an entire generation of young music lovers -- in
its own way, it was as revolutionary as Mendelssohn's revival of the Baroque genius's
music a century before it.
Gould's Bach was hip; he swung with a passion that put the
lie to the perception of the composer as a dowdy, juiceless, old choirmaster. Bach, as
interpreted by Gould, was vigorous, mercurial, impassioned, flashy -- the man was
indefatigable.
In one of those ironies that no sane author would even
attempt, Gould recorded the Goldbergs again 26 years later and died before they could even
be released. His entire career lay between those recordings the way a digression rests
between parentheses.
What a contrast that recording was. Gould had spent
his lifetime studying and contemplating Bach and his return to The Goldberg Variations
was an opportunity to put his youthful excesses to rest once and for all. Gould had come
to believe he had committed the ultimate sin of toying with the great composer's
intentions. The work deserved the respect of the performer, Gould maintained -- the
pianist came to believe his youthful exuberance had robbed the composer of the dignity he
deserved.
To a casual listener the two performances might as well be
different compositions. The swing and improvisatory hysteria of Gould's debut had given
way to the sort of measured, solemnity the earlier disc had seemed to refute -- or so went
the critical consensus. (That it was also an early digital recording was enough to condemn
it to many audiophiles.)
This three-disc set includes both the 1955
and 1981 recordings, as well as a generous text booklet and a third disc composed of a
fascinating (and frequently hilarious) interview with Gould as well as some unreleased
takes. The extras are welcome, of course, and they do succeed in making this volume an
unarguable must-have volume of Sony's Glenn Gould edition, but it's the two Goldbergs that
are the draw here and they make a fascinating study.
It's not merely that they are so different. One doesn't
often experience such a radical shift in a performer's interpretation, but that's the
thing about genius -- unlike us "normals," geniuses don't need to proceed
logically.
For me, the big shock was discovering 20 years on that
Gould's valedictory Goldberg Variations was not the dry, dignified
performance I heard it as in 1981. It is deeply, profoundly full of passion and, while it
does not have the epic headlong rush, that adrenaline-fueled machismo of the 1955
performance, it is, in its own quiet way, even more deeply felt.
It derives its power -- and its passion -- from precisely
that sense of gravitas that so disappointed critics (and me, I admit it) all those
years ago. Gould slows down the tempi, stretching them until they seem to just keep going
and going and going steadily on, but he contrasts that stateliness with brilliant flurries
of notes played with even greater precision and speed than he assayed in the '50s.
If it didn't serve the music so completely, it might almost
appear a sort of effortless trick -- lifting the veil to say, I could do this if
I wished. But it's not a trick, except that now I wondered how this depth of feeling
remained hidden in plain sight to me for all these years. It took Gould a quarter of a
century to rethink his debut recording and it took me almost that long to discover how
moving his later one was.
Sony has certainly done right by these two masterpieces
with this set. It's a wonderful thing, from its folding ecopack format, to the handsomely
laid-out text booklet, to the extra disc of ephemera.
The sound is first rate. Pristine copies of Gould's 1955
mono LP can sound richer (perhaps even quieter, if you're very, very lucky), but in
40 years of searching, I haven't found many unplayed copies of that record -- it's one of
those rare baroque records from that era that was almost always played to shreds. CBS's
mid-'80s mono pressing of the disc (contained in the eight-disc The Glenn Gould Legacy:
Vol. 1- J. S. Bach [CBS 79358]) is a better bet, but it's the 1955 pressing you want.
The 1981 recording, though, has never sounded better -- not on LP and not in previous CD
releases.
Christmas is coming. Put A State of Wonder on your
want list, or if you're feeling really generous, give it to someone you love. Believe me,
it will be appreciated -- and right now, not in 20 years.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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