English Suites 4-6

Forget bronze - all of Gould's Bach-playing that I have yet heard (probably most of it by now) is gold-medal stuff for me. However two thousand years ago another bachelor, Horace, was emboldened to claim permanence for what he left to us, and I don't feel it's unreasonable or presumptuous to claim it for Gould as well. In his own way Gould created a new epoch. He fought and buried the myth that the keyboard masterpieces of Bach could be properly represented in performance only on the instruments available to the master before the piano was invented. He reminded us of what we should never have allowed ourselves to lose sight of, namely that instruments are there for music and not music for instruments. Above all, he embodied the great and prevalent truth that the music of one genius is best heard through the medium of another.

This set of the final three English suites was recorded in the 1970's when Gould was in his 40's. The very interesting liner-note gives us some insight into how Gould went about his recording sessions. He would do a variety of takes of certain movements, and his interpretations would sometimes be startlingly different from one take to the next. If you know his disc of part of The Art of Fugue this will not surprise you, as it presents certain contrapuncti in alternative readings, made not far apart in time, that are as unlike as chalk and cheese. Gould himself, and most commentators since, made a great song and dance about the two different readings he offered of the Goldberg variations over a time-interval of 26 years, and while the difference undoubtedly reflected changes in his thinking and philosophy to a great extent, what I read here suggests to me that genius of this order is not necessarily a matter of one single view even at one point in time. Here he has had to settle for one way of playing each given piece. I would give a lot to have heard some of his other ideas, but I am only too grateful for what he decided on.

The playing here is of Gould's usual kind, the touch generally non-legato but with a few slight concessions to legato and even a hint of sustaining pedal here and there. Also as usual, there is very little rubato, and a tempo once set is adhered to rigidly except for a slight easing in the final phrase of a movement. No startling speeds, particularly no amazingly fast ones, are adopted this time. The recorded sound, while satisfactory in the basic respect of preserving the player's clarity of touch, is not actually the best I know among Gould's recordings. It is slightly hard, and does not do full justice to the pearly quality of the runs such as we hear in his set of Haydn sonatas, although it emphasises the cut-diamond brilliance of his trills and other ornaments; and that, after gold and bronze, exhausts my stock of metaphors from jewellery and sculpture.

There is nothing about the music in the liner-note, which is probably no great loss considering what we are often offered in that respect. There is a certain amount about the man himself, some of it from the man himself who, whatever his reclusiveness in many ways, was nothing if not talkative. Whether he suffered from agoraphobia or whether he was just naturally shy I can't tell. What should be more important to us now that he is gone is that he came to have such a liking for recording. This particular disc is not the first I would think of if I had to introduce some newcomer to Gould, but I am only too glad to own it as another ornament on his monument.

Gould's music is so beautifully crisp and clean that it's always an amazement, but this recording makes you feel that he's in the room with you! This 1974 recording was released in 1977 and remastered in 20-bit technology in 2001 for Sony Classical. Crystal-clear recording--Enjoy every minute of it!

...then you know why this is an immediate five stars. If you don't know Glenn Gould's Bach this disc is a good starting point.

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