17 Jul 08
I got a question that's a little obscure, probably.
In 1962 Leonard Bernstein conducted a performance of the Brahms D Minor Piano Concerto with Glenn Gould as the soloist.
Gould insisted on an interpretation that Bernstein for various reasons found really far out. So Bernstein went out on stage before the performance and made a short, humorous speech in the nature of disclaiming responsibility for the way the piece was going to be played.
Then Gould proceeded to play the first movement at half the indicated tempo in Brahms' score. He also changed the dynamic indications and so this interpretation never was played again, insofar as I know.
An attempt to get Gould to record this with Bernstein fell through, but the live performance with the opening speech and a subsequent interview with Gould a year or so later has been issued on CD.
My question is: I have heard this performance referred to as "infamous."
Why? Where can I find material characterizing it as such?
The recording is unusual and the piece comes in at 55 minutes -- there is a lot of great music in the piece. I would not describe it, however, as a great concerto. It is more akin to a symphony with piano.
18 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinIf you want additional info, contact these guys and they can direct you to where you need to go. They are very helpful.
thanks - that was helpful.
However, I do like this recording because it is so unusual.
The version I first listened to many times is with Ormandy and Rudolph Serkin.
www.tso.ca
18 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinMaybe out of place ... but ....
I got a question that's a little obscure, probably.
In 1962 Leonard Bernstein conducted a performance of the Brahms D Minor Piano Concerto with Glenn Gould as the soloist.
Gould insisted on an interpretation that Bernstein for various reasons found really far out. So Bernstein went out on stage before the performance and made a short, humorous speech ...[text shortened]... uld not describe it, however, as a great concerto. It is more akin to a symphony with piano.
I love Brahms' piano concertos! 😀
18 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinHave you listened to the CD? Is it as awful acoustically as the reviewer said?
thanks - that was helpful.
However, I do like this recording because it is so unusual.
The version I first listened to many times is with Ormandy and Rudolph Serkin.
It sounds like they were not prepared the historic nature of the recording and had not given it professional treatment. I wonder if acoustic scientists could improve the sound, get rid of audience coughs, untincan the sound, etc.
18 Jul 08
Originally posted by sonhouseI have listened to the CD many times, both in a good home theater system, on the audiophile system I still have downstairs with all the bells and whistles, and also on a premium JBL system in my car. I find I have to make allowances for the fact it is not stereophonic, the audience makes a lot of noise, and the overall sound isn't as good as a studio version would be.
Have you listened to the CD? Is it as awful acoustically as the reviewer said?
It sounds like they were not prepared the historic nature of the recording and had not given it professional treatment. I wonder if acoustic scientists could improve the sound, get rid of audience coughs, untincan the sound, etc.
None of that matters, ultimately, because what I hear very clearly is the way Gould plays this music - each and every note. Of course, I believe that was his real intent. His ego was huge as was his ability. But he was so eccentric that he could pass off what I think is his desire to be the center of attention throughout the piece as a desire to be consistent with the baroquish mood he claimed motivated his approach. It is noteworthy that Brahms, due to the genesis of this work not being a concerto, also had the idea of making the piano and orchestra more of an ensemble and not, as in the more conventional concertos of his time, a contest.
I did not realize at first why this interpretation should be regarded as so far out. Music is now often played much more slowly than before it was possible to fit more than 60 minutes on a so-called long playing vinyl record.
19 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinYou were lucky to get 60 minutes! More like 45, but I guess they could cut down the excursions of the grooves by cutting down the volume and cram more in, but the s/n would suffer some. I still love vinyl. There are some absolute gems out there like, well, you don't like folk music so much but I have some truly remarkable records where the performance was virtuosic and the sound recording was superb.
I have listened to the CD many times, both in a good home theater system, on the audiophile system I still have downstairs with all the bells and whistles, and also on a premium JBL system in my car. I find I have to make allowances for the fact it is not stereophonic, the audience makes a lot of noise, and the overall sound isn't as good as a studio versio ...[text shortened]... an before it was possible to fit more than 60 minutes on a so-called long playing vinyl record.
21 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinIt's funny that you should describe it this way, because that's exactly how it was conceived.
The recording is unusual and the piece comes in at 55 minutes -- there is a lot of great music in the piece. I would not describe it, however, as a great concerto. It is more akin to a symphony with piano.
In the decades after Beethoven, because of the writings of such critics as E.T.A. Hoffman and
A.B. Marx, composers of the 'Romantic' period were sort of gunshy when it came to writing
symphonies. That is, anything they ever wrote was immediately compared to the monster
symphonies of Beethoven, most notably 'The Ninth.'
In the next generation of critics, Robert Schumann was one of the foremost voices. And, as
Brahms developed into a composer in his own right, Schumann pulled a 'John-the-Baptist' card:
He hailed Brahms as the 'messiah of the symphony,' the heir to Beethoven, &c &c &c. This was,
of course, after a litany of so-called 'kleinmeister,' minor composers few people have heard of
who strove to make their mark in the symphonic world, but failed because they were not
evaluated on their own merits, but whether they sounded Beethovenian.
Consequently, Brahms basically clammed up; any symphonic sketches he had were thrown away.
Only two such pieces before his monumental first symphony survive (to my knowledge):
The Piano Concerto in d, and the Piano Quintet in f.
The way that composers sketched out symphonies was often in what is called 'short score,'
which is basically two pianos; basically, one for the strings, the other for the winds (but not
always quite so cut and dried). So, as Brahms was working these out, he decided that they
simply would not do as symphonies, but that the material could be reworked in another fashion
(thus, their final forms).
This compositional technique bears itself out: if you have the occasion to play or listen to
any of his four symphonies (or, for example, the symphonic Variations on a Theme by Haydn)
in a two-piano arrangement, they are decidedly satisfying -- much more so than, say, the
four-hand piano arrangements of Mahler's symphonies, or Bruckner's, or Dvorak's who were
writing largely contemporaneously with him.
Personally, of all his concerti, I find the d minor to be the least satisfying. The 'real' piano
concerto (in that it was conceived from the outset as a piano concerto), the one in Bb, I find,
is significantly better (alas, never recorded by Glenn Gould). And I'll take the Double Concerto
and the Violin Concerto over the first piano concerto, personally.
Nemesio
21 Jul 08
Originally posted by ScriabinIf memory serves, Gould's presentation was meant as a musicological challenge to the norms of
I did not realize at first why this interpretation should be regarded as so far out. Music is now often played much more slowly than before it was possible to fit more than 60 minutes on a so-called long playing vinyl record.
the time. That is, Gould developed this notion of continuity of tactus (not his term) in which the
fundamental beat of the piece remained the same. In order to make this work with the Brahms
(which at the time was published without authentic metronome markings), he had to play the
first movement slowly and the second movement quickly (relative to their 'Time Words'😉. Some
years later, but in Glenn Gould's lifetime, they found Brahms' notes on the piece with his own
metronome indications, which blew Gould's outlandish theory totally out of the water (not that it
got any musicological recognition at the time). He was unperturbed, naturally.
What is very, very interesting is that he employed this continuity in many of his other
interpretations of pieces with varying degrees of success -- less so in Beethoven, but more so
in Bach. In fact, one of the most important Bach scholars in academic circles, Don Franklin,
has made a compelling argument about the use of proportion in Bach's music (I won't go into
the long-winded explanation of it), stating that the essential tactus of a piece ought to be
preserved across movements at least in proportion (1:2, 2:1, 3:2 [sesquialtera] and so on)
except where a terminal fermata indicates otherwise (as distinct from a 'da capo' fermata).
That is, Dr Franklin is promoting a compelling case for the sort of thing that Gould intuited about
compositions.
You can hear this continuity of tactus in a very pronounced way in his 1981 recording of the
Goldberg Variations. If you tap along from variation to variation, you will see that Gould
preserves the fundamental beat for several variations at a time. I find it a very organic performance.
Nemesio