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Comment by stan_rogers | Hacker News Reader

Gould's home piano was a Chickering, but the GVs were played on Steinways in both the '55 and '81 recordings. The "condemned" CD318 he preferred was very like his Chickering, with a lot of lateral play. After it was fixed and brought to spec, it was just another piano.

I would love to have had the tech available to have him record his '81 remotely. The rhythmic continuity may have given it a less-than-traditional presentation, but I found the whole to make an engaging, coherent piece. But there was no getting around his voice by that point. Perhaps there could be a dynamically identical reperformance made some day (like the Zenph rendition of the '55 with a good deal more accuracy). Until then, I can put up with the sing-along, I guess. But I find I have trouble with traditional pacings now.

Both the DVD (in which the '81 is put together, largely in post) and the interview in the combined box set are well worth a listen.

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>no getting around his voice

Are you referring to his vocal musings heard on the recording? To me, this is what makes these so very special - it is as if he is in the same room with me, humming away as if playing to himself with no-one listening. On that note, I'm listening to Kimiko's recording at the moment and she's playing with a distinct Gould influence yet it's almost too clean for me - a piece so exquisitely structured as the Variations can cope with a little less precision in terms of the rhythmic attenuation. I also think it's fair to say that Gould brought so much to this piece that we can't play it anymore without reference to him.

OP: you may find the Rachmaninov piano roll recordings interesting, my personal favourite the Prelude No.10: http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=650

Thanks for the info. I made an acquaintance of a concert pianist maybe 8 years ago, and started reading about Gould, different pianos. My friend has a mental catalog of all the pianos she's performed on, the hall acoustics, and the tuners (she told me there's a tuner around Santa Cruz, CA who's a magician).

Gould also purchased a Yamaha, i remember, I was surprised since it has a very different action, starting with 10mm key dip (vs. 3/8" on most European concert grands).

regarding singing: Keith Jarrett's older solo recordings feature humalongs, along with moans and groans too. It would be a pity to avoid those 2 artists because of that

Except that Jarrett did not, himself, want to get rid of the vocalizations. Gould did, but found that they had become such an intrinsic part of his learning of the piece that he was unable to play to his satisfaction without vocalizing. (Note that he's doing a sort of meta-riff much of the time rather than simply singing along with his playing. It bothered him that the non-Bachness of his singing has to be recorded along with what Bach wrote.)

It's not that I avoid Gould (or suggest anyone else does)—in fact I've got his entire Bach catalog and love it (Beethoven and Sibelius, not so much)—but one of the immense pleasures of listening to Bach in any form, and particularly in Gould's performances, is that one can listen to the whole of a piece and follow the voices individually at the same time. (Or, I guess, you can sort of Necker between the two if you can't quite hit the enlightenment listning.) That was where Gould blew the "reference" Landowska out of the water in '55 (she played a much more "chorded" performance). Listened to at low volumes, I can still do that with Gould's later recordings, but if the piece is played loudly enough to make the piano's voicing and dynamics distinctive, then the voice-over clouds the texture. I'd just love to hear it as Gould imagined it rather than as it was captured, not as a replacement necessarily, but as a companion.

The '81 recording makes it difficult for me to enjoy other interpretations. The Aria is played more faithfully, but I find the pacing jarring to my Gould-81 ears.

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