A State of Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations (1955 & 1981)

After having roamed the earth for a few decades and sampled what I could of its delights, I must declare Gould's performances of Bach's "Goldberg Variations" (specifically, this 3-CD set) to be, in the final analysis, one of the 3 or 4 most heartbreaking and inexpressibly lovely things I have ever encountered.

Here's the story, though I'm no expert:

In the mid-1950's, Glenn Gould was a dorky and unknown Canadian pianist who recorded these pieces, until then considered too "cerebral" to have a very wide audience.

But the suprising grace and remarkable clarity of the performances shot Gould to superstardom, where, regrettably, he spent his tenure as a fey and off-putting crank.

Many years later, saddened and deeply bruised by life, Gould recorded the exact same pieces again, and they sounded completely different! Instead of being bright and vivacious, they were now somber and withdrawn.

And then, mere days after recording the second version, Gould was gone from the earth.

You are getting 3 CD's: the first is the 1955 recordings, the second is the 1981 recordings, and the third is a kind of interview disk done with Gould days before his death in which the differences are dwelt upon.

Nothing is perfect, however, and there are things that bother me even with these divine CDs.

For example, the sick and eccentric Gould has a habit of humming audibly and knocking the piano as he played. Endearing? Get ready for it in any case.

Also, the technical laying-out of the CDs could have been brought off more cunningly. For example, Gould had a way of launching from one piece to the next without much of a pause. Those who laid out the tracks for the CDs would have been wiser to make each CD one track, that it may not be interrupted. But as it is, if you rip the CD's to your computer or iPod, this will be a constant annoyance, as the tracks have to momentarily reorient to refresh themselves. (If you know what I'm talking about, make sure you rip the tracks as one giant track, and that should take care of the problem.)

Alas! I fear the earth holds few such treasures.

Remarkable though the 1981 performances are, I find myself distracted by the lack of care during the original sessions to ensure continuity of setup from one session to the next, resulting in some unpleasant jarring at edit points - the dreaded "flying piano syndrome" where mic placement differs across the cuts. That this was allowed to occur during sessions whose significance must have been clear at the time is incomprehensible - that Sony have not attempted to ameliorate the problems for this release is unforgivable. They have also been content to allow what seems to be progressive variations in channel balance caused by deterioration of the master tapes to remain - at some points the piano wanders from side to side.

Equally perplexing is the relatively low level (greater than -3dB)of the transfer to CD, which having gone to the lengths of the remastering that they undertook simply wastes part of the available dynamic range.

Once one can turn one's mind from these distractions the music and the interpretations shines through, but what a shame they didn't make a better job of it at a technical level.

There is little one can say about perfection, once one has admitted the existence of it. Gould's intelligence and musical integrity shine through in every note of these two renditions. He takes a fearsomely technical encyclopaedic work and turns it into sheer poetry. As well, the interview with Tim Page contained on the third disk is fascinating, quirky and fun. We get to hear something of Gould's personality and thought patterns, which in his case is well worth while.
The only thing I wondered was this: would it have been better to have arranged the selections alternately, taking each piece as played in 1955 and pairing it with the same piece from 1981? Then the contrasts between performances would have been more evident. This idea reminds me of a recording I have of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, in which each movement is presented in its piano version, followed immediately by Ravel's orchestration.
All in all, though, I think they chose the right approach for the Gould recordings; we are able to hear each version as a coherent whole, and how each movement contrasts with the ones before and after it.
This set of disks is a must-have for the collection of any pianist, at any level of ability.

The CDs sounded just fine on my laptop, but when I was listening to the 1981 recordings on my ipod mini there it was, loud as a leaky faucet and just as distracting: Gould humming along as he played ! At first I figured I was hearing things, but it became increasingly difficult to ignore the constant "hmm hmm hmm"s that kept fading in and out like some sort of auditory tease. Is anyone else experiencing the same problem ?

I really can't say which version of the Variations I like best. Luckily there is no reason to choose now that I have both, and how appropriate to have two variations of the Variations. Of course the sound of the 1981 version is vastly superior, but the 1955 recording sounds to my ear very good for the era. (Gould was a stickler for recording quality, of course.)

After reading some reviews I was a little disappointed in the long interview that constitutes the majority of the third disk. I don't care for the interviewer's or Gould's bad acting. But let me hasten to add that the content of the analysis of the performance in the interview is really fascinating and deepened my respect for the thought behind Gould's work. The outtakes are also great, as other reviewers have mentioned. I'm very happy this disk was included.

In a nutshell, I just don't see how any classical music fan can live without these CDs.