Word: goulding
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...harpsichord and organ. In the artistic center of the interpretive storm are a number of impeccably good pianists who play Bach's music better than it has been played since Mendelssohn resurrected the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. The best of these are Rosalyn Tureck and Glenn Gould...
...severity, Tureck's playing is Victorian in its embellishments when compared with Gould's quiet intimacy with Bach. Because Gould, 31, is convinced that the bigness of modern concert halls is a harmful anachronism for music designed for parlors, he gives his deepest efforts to his recordings. With a piano on which the stroke of each key has been shortened a fraction of an inch to make its action more like that of a harpsichord, Gould works tirelessly at recording sessions, positioning the microphone so close to the piano that his constant contrapuntal humming sometimes comes through...
Although Tureck's music is dynamically richer than Gould's, Gould seems the more passionate player-and that is his great virtue. There is a grace and good humor to all his recordings that make them seem like captured improvisations-personal, inspired, free. Such creative excitement is something few pianists can achieve, but in Gould it is so strong that even his humming seems interesting instead of intrusive...
...music now seem blindingly pure. Through his work there runs a thread of such subtlety and daring, such piety, passion and genius that the musical world stands before it-as Mendelssohn once did-in a "reverie of wonder." The final questions on the interpretation of such music, as Gould, for one, is quick to agree, are better addressed to clergymen than pianists. In an Age of Anxiety, Bach's music is a voice of reassurance, the art of a man eminently secure in the universe...
...same time, or shaking one person's hand with both of his, or shaking a hand while patting an elbow or a shoulder, or using the handshake to hurry someone past him in the reception line. After viewing the performance on television, New York Times TV Critic Jack Gould quipped: "The President can only be described as the Y. A. Tittle of handshakers; he does not let go until the last moment...