How Glenn Gould Broke Classical Music

the Canadian pianist Glenn g is to be soloist now Lennard Bernstein conducting the New York thonic April 6th 1962 Carnegie Hall America's most famous conductor is joined by a 20s something sensation seated at the piano bench to perform one of the monuments of the symphonic repertoire the piano Concerto Number One in D Minor by Browns what could go wrong only one of the most scandalous life performances of classical music since a Parisian audience started rioting at the premiere of Stravinsky's ride of spring a half century earlier in this video we'll examine the act of musical violence Glen G allegedly committed that evening and uncover how it changed the course of his career a career that scandalized The Gatekeepers of good taste and continues to polarize the music world to this [Music] day I think Mr binstein will have something to say to the audience so down to the stage don't be frightened Mr Gold is here frightened because G was Notorious for canceling performances at the last minute G was a hypochondriac one of his many eccentricities that preoccupied critics the cartoonish gate the aversion to shaking hands the unseasonal attire the hot water arm baths the pill popping the chair the posture the fictional alter egos the singing and just culating the preference for Animals over people the preference for Orlando Gibbons over any other composer but most of all critics just couldn't come to grips with some of G's wackier interpretations of piano Masterworks I cannot say I am in total agreement with Mr G's conception so Leonard Bernstein made the Fateful decision to warn the audience before the performance I feel I must make this small disclaimer at last G appeared on stage bowed and the music began the late SEI Ozawa Bernstein's assistant at the time was listening from backstage decades later he would revisit the recording with author Haruki morakami pointing out that the opening is meant to be felt in a big two you can see what Ozawa is talking about here in a more conventional performance that Bernstein gave with pianist Christian dimon in the [Music] 1980s notice that Bernstein's large gestures are two to the bar within which six subdivided cord notes can flow [Music] easily this Tempo is fairly typical the dotted half equaling roughly 50 BPM some recordings go faster than this like Leon fleer's iconic performance with George zel clocking in at 58 BPM that's brahms's metronome marking by the way meanwhile G and Bernstein are moving more than 20% slower than what Brahms had indicated hovering around 44 beats per minute as Ozawa remembers Lenny is conducting this as Six Beats because dupal would be too slow to maintain a consistent interval between beats things calm down when we near Gould's entrance which if you've never heard the piece before sounds fine just a relaxed from the countryside though it must have been flu season in the [Music] country now even if to the unsuspecting ear there's nothing particularly unusual about the vibe Gould and bernsteiner projecting here to critics the tempo was slow to the point of sluggishness this led one critic to conclude that g was quote suffering from musical hallucinations that made him unfit for public [Music] appearances [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Arrow begins in his previous slow tempo before accelerating down the double octave mountain and generating so much momentum he's going almost 50% faster than when he [Music] started compare that to [Music] G so it's not that G's Tempo is so slow it's that it never seems to change and uh then there's the fact that he begins those fortisimo octaves a performance distinctly different from any I've ever heard or even dreamed of for that matter in its remarkably broad Tempe and its frequent departures from bram's Dynamic indications this was all a giant Fiasco for New York Times critic Harold shanberg whose sardonic review published the next day as largely responsible for the notoriety surrounding G's performance in a letter to his imaginary College buddy shonberg wrote quote the G boy played the brahs de Miner concerto slower than we used to practice it and between you and me and that corner lampost OIP maybe the reason he plays it so slow is maybe his technique is not so good shots fired schomberg's musical sensibilities were on another planet from Gould entirely he valued the virtuoso romantic tradition above all and he would go on to write a biography of Vladimir Horwitz who was in many ways Gould's ant anthis so now let's hear horowits play the same octaves with the same Orchestra in the same Hall under the Baton of aruro Toscanini 30 years earlier it's literally almost twice as fast as G's octaves and it reminds me of something that R monov said to Horowitz once you won the octave race [Music] we're at opposite ends of the spectrum here so young Horowitz was a showoff that's easy to understand if you've got it flaunt it but Gould's slow and measured approach is a little bit harder to explain especially since later in 1962 Gould would go on to give another performance of the brahs de minor conero with the Baltimore Symphony this time and while still measured his Tempo is well within the bounds of [Music] normal so why did he play so slowly with Bernstein was he just trying to be different trying to get a rise out of people but then why risk career suicide in front of the classical music intelligencia in New York let's dig deeper I'm a recovering guah holic and I have been for almost a quarter Century ever since I uh wrote a book report about this biography in the 9th grade so I've been reading and thinking about the dude for most of my life and if you want to dig really really deep consider subscribing to my patreon where I've compiled all the research that went into this video as well as a really Illuminating 40-minute interview all about gou that I did with musicologist arvet Ashby who you're going to meet later on in this video in general your support will just help me make more videos about all kinds of pianists and pieces and you can even vote on topics but there will definitely be more ghou don't forget to like And subscribe to this Channel and now on with the show you are about to hear a rather shall we say unorthodox performance of the brahs Deon chero let's for a few years G's 1955 recording of box Goldberg Variations made him an overnight sensation it's a disc that's never gone out of print to this day and is hailed as one of the great recordings of the 20 Century in any genre but unlike the bronze conero in question G's Goldberg Variations were not slow very not slow so yeah Gold's technique was pretty pretty pretty good and of course Harold shonberg knew that all [Music] along nevertheless Gould would quickly become a polarizing figure his next recordings were met with increased scrutiny and from mid-century critics to today's esteemed YouTube commenters G's unorthodox playing has been condemned in similar terms for 70 years now he plays like a machine it's too fast it's too [Music] slow part of G's motivation was certainly shock value he wanted to get people's attention and he knew he would ruffle feathers to do is to make people sit up on their seats from the first note and say this is an event this is a happening music if you want it in one way word yes indeed G was an anti- pianist who actually identified more as a composer in his approach to interpreting canonic repertoire there's nothing against doing something in in a quite Orthodox way but I think it's important especially in making recordings that one actually contributes a totally new view one in fact recreates the work one one turns performance into composition I think this is the key to it but in recomposing old music there was always a method to G's Madness for example G rejected the conventional practice of exaggerating the difference in character between first and second themes in classical Sonata form as such the whole spine of the of the music is is lost one one no longer can feel a sense of backbone Bernstein's brahm's performance with Zimmerman exemplifies that convention here's Bernstein's opening theme once again and now here's Zimmerman's second theme it's almost half Tempo so in his performance with Bernstein G set out to give the Brahms a backbone I maintain to this day that what shocked everybody Visa the interpretation was not the basic Tempo itself certainly you know the basic Tempo was very [Music] slow it was the fact for example that the that the second theme of the first movement of the bronze which you know after all is an inversion of the First theme was not appreciably slower than the First theme now if you actually hold up G's second theme Tempo to Bernstein's opening Tempo there is a clear difference roughly 30 to 44 BPM but that misses the point a little bit I would never argue in favor of an inflexible musical pulse you know that just destroys music but I've come to feel over the years that a musical work however long it may be ought to have basically one pulse rate one constant rhythmic reference point and that's true here the evolution of the pulse is so subtle and gradual over the 8 minutes between the two themes you do get the impression as a subjective listener that there's a single enduring heartbeat the whole time it was played with something like hide Andes continuity instead of what most people anticipate is broyan contrast I'm going to guess that what they objected to was the fact that it didn't present the well shall we say masculine feminine contrast that one has come to expect exactly I'll stick with your terms you presented an asexual or maybe a unisexual view of the work you know G avoided what he called dramatic posturing in his solos but for critics that kind of drama was intrinsic to the music itself and as a result they could only hear what was lost in G's music and not what was gained isn't that rather rigid and inflexible I I think that by making other kinds of coloristic compensations you can give a feeling of infinite Variety in other words by refusing to externally manipulate the drama via Tempo fluctuations and dynamic contrasts like pianist usually do G had to look inside the music itself and create audible interest in brahms's Harmony and Counterpoint and this meant playing with interior lines another facet of G's performance that upset Herold shanberg sensibilities like calculus schelberg can't figure out if G's inner voices were invented or discovered either way Harold thinks it's wrong of the gold boy to bring them out this one coming up is actually one of my personal favorites so let's see what you [Music] think I try to invent happenings for inner voices even if they don't really exist and I I shall get a lot of bad reviews when having admitted it probably but who cares Contra shonberg and his fellow critics Otto Friedrich in his biography of Gould actually narrates the experience of listening to this performance on its own terms leaving preconceived expectations at the door on first hearing the incredibly slow opening to this concerto one is almost inevitably overwhelmed by the lumbering and ungainly Tempo yet as the movement proceeds one begins to appreciate other aspects of G's performance a Clarity that is rarely heard in more conventional versions and he plays the lyrical passages with an unsentimental sweetness that is extremely beautiful I mean there's just such an understated Majesty to that that it it doesn't even matter that it's not how it's supposed to go but for shonberg there's absolutely nothing redeeming and GS playing and so he even mocked lonard Bernstein for thinking there might have been anything valid about it he and other critics accused Bernstein of betrayal of throwing Gould under the bus with his disclaimer when in fact Gould had approved of Bernstein's speech and the two remained friendly after the whole brewhaha Mr Bernstein's speech was full of the best of good spirits and great charm in fact I sat back stage giggling before playing the thing I could I could hardly stop laughing when we started I I thought it was delightful but the question does remain if Bernstein disagreed so strongly with G's conception then why am I conducting it because I am fascinating glad to have the chance for a new look at this much played work because we can all learn something from this extraordinary artist who is a thinking performer lucky for us G put his thinking into writing just a few months later and there we find out that G's motivations were bigger than the brahs D Minor he was taking aim at the whole conero genre G writes that the peculiarities of my interpretation largely concern themselves with an attempt to subordinate The Soloist role not to aize it to integrate rather than to isolate remember those fortisimo octaves well now we know why Gould tiptoed into them to smooth over the jarring contrast between the orchestra's Serene pianissimo and the piano's sudden Outburst listen again program note writers have told us so much about this sense of struggle of Duality between in piano they must always be at War you know and I don't really see why this is so and this competitive spectator sport element of piano caneros was just an extreme example of what G found revolting about live concerts in general I detest audiences not in their individual components but on mass I detest audiences I think they're a force of evil we have this Lust For Blood for you me you want to sit there in the arena and hope that that Hamlet forgets his lines and after many years of flirting with retirement The Fallout from the brahs Certo performance would prove to be the Tipping Point that led goul to leave the stage for good in its place G would take up permanent residence in the recording studio where he would go on to apply his experimental approach to interpretation that culminated in 1981 with arguably G's greatest achievement his re-recording of box Goldberg Variations it occurred to me on one of my rare Rel lisings to that early recording that it was perhaps the little bit like 30 very interesting but somewhat independent-minded pieces and I suddenly felt if I looked at it again I could find a way of making some sort of almost arithmetical correspondence between the theme and the subsequent variations I think it's a technique the idea of rhythmic continuity that's really only useful if everybody does feel it in their bones this was his most successful attempt to articulate compositional relationships across an expansive form using just a sing pulse yeah totally different kind yeah justifies doing the that's completely yeah Marty thank you that that's the one that's the key an approach he first pioneered on stage at Carnegie Hall 20 years earlier and a rather celebrated brewhaha and involved you the brahs D Minor concerto Leonard Bernstein and the New York fer mon it certainly did that was one of the first really clear really thorough demonstrations of his system a week before that Infamous performance Bernstein got a call from G who was excited by the discoveries he had made in the brahs de Miner this was G's own disclaimer to Bernstein about what to expect in rehearsal in an article written just after G's death Bernstein said that g wasn't trying to attract attention with his brahm's performance but was looking for truth I loved that in him Bernstein wrote but that's not quite right gold wasn't looking for truth in the score any more than a car mechanics looking for truth and an engine G was looking to solve problems this is an odd work G wrote about the brahs it has always been something of a problem child that sounds like something a Critic would have written about him but anyway G found the concerto to be bursting with radical personality but draped on a brittle academic skeleton so he was excited to perform spinal surgery on the work in front of 3,000 people [Music] and so basically it was a work that really bothered him in terms of structural and musical questions and that's not a usual approach that musicians take to great works of of of western music right you don't approach a Beethoven symphony by saying oh my God this is you know all these problem problems in here how am I going to make this work G writes I do not by any means propose that this is the only way to do problems yet I feel it is an approach that takes cognizance of the nature of the piece and that within its own necessary limits it works it works I can only tell you it works in his book absolute music mechanical reproduction musicologist Arvid Ashby identifies this attitude and G's approach to musical interpretation as belonging to a tradition of philosophical pragmatism in this tradition there's no real trth truth with a capital T that's out there and we just have to go try and find it rather as William James wrote when the pragmatists Speak Of Truth they mean exclusively something about the ideas namely their worken Works while in practice interpretive musicians are often faced with making this or that phrase work when pressed on the topic 99% of them will invoke realizing the composer intentions as the primary aim of their interpretation the composers have already made the music work this thing goes so performers just have to Faithfully deliver the message and this widely held belief has led some musicians like 20th century pianist Malcolm frager to set out to prove Gould wrong in his brahm's kerto interpretation frager cites this metronom marking that Brahms wrote into a surviving manuscript so what ghoul did is quote not what brahs had in mind it's [Music] provable well and that's the rationalist ideal you know you are in search of Truth out there somewhere and the sad thing is of course is you never arrive there right this ideology is also embodied in Arthur schnabel's quote that he prefers Works which are better than they can be performed as if there's a Beethoven string quartet that's just hovering Above All of Us in some kind of platonic realm the idea that you know we will strive our entire lives as musicians to get close to the truth of the clav or the The Witcher Betto and Sonata I think it's probably not good for uh musicians mental health or even their physical health to sort of be in this constant pilgrimage that never really [Music] arrives and this gets to the heart of what made Gould so radical in the classical tradition you're not supposed to question the existence of the higher truths about how music is supposed to sound you're meant to humble yourself before the Godly composers on an infinite quest to realize their mysterious intentions it's entirely possible that you as a performer know more about the structure of that piece than the composer may have done it sounds a terribly arrogant statement I know but it it's it is it is possible and this explains why gold is often criticized for putting himself on the level of this Pantheon of infallible composers with his recomposed versions of their pieces but gold was doing the exact opposite he was bringing these composer deities back down to earth rehumanizing in them in an effort to communicate something about their music to listeners that is yeah sometimes surprising but most importantly intelligible and persuasive I think if it does not if it does not really make sense one must Chuck it out with few exceptions most of us classical musicians are in fact children of Leonard Bernstein's attitude to musical interpretation according to longtime record producer Paul Meyers who worked with both G and Bernstein G was really quite modest he regarded himself as eccentric and what he chose to play and hoped people would enjoy it Bernstein was more inclined to say I'm playing it because God told me this is how it should be why are we talking about truths and stuff that's way out there why don't we just try to make it work for us here now with the best things that we have at our disposal I think that's pragmatism in a nutshell and I think that's exactly where gold was coming from there's no truth out there about the brahs D Minor conero only a conversation were having about it in musical acts and speech acts to Grapple with this gigantic concerto score G was just trying to find one solution to it I have only once before in my life had to submit to a solar is totally new and incompatible concept and that was the last time I accompanied Mr G [Music] G's pragmatic approach it actually proves to be more relatable to ordinary listeners outside the classical cult a glen gold recording of Bach or Mozart or Beethoven or brahs these are transhistorical jam sessions that grab you by the ears and say listen to this G is latching onto uh this idea of GrooVe how it might apply to to socalled classical music that's part of the vernacular right that people do latch on to that aspect that it's really hard to sit still when you listen to gold playing that Clockwork aspect really pulls you in the vibe I always got from talking with Glenn about any of the performances he did was a sportive sense I think he wanted to try it there is in music what Dimitri Metropolis used to call the sportive element that factor of curiosity Adventure experiment I don't think statements were his thing he might want to play it this way one day and play it that way the [Music] other and in his brahs conero performance g wasn't making a statement he was making an argument an argument for the validity of this piece as a coherent work of [Music] art but gold Tempe were so slow according to Bernstein it went against the essence of the [Applause] music he felt it had no sense of that big swinging two feel which berstein claimed was the point of the [Music] [Applause] movement for Bernstein G fell off the tight rope into the safety net called adimo you can hear in the second movement also in 64 that g made it sound like a continuation of the first Bernstein wrote quote that this was G's major Discovery the two movements were really both aspects of the same movement Lenny felt that in order to preserve the antagonism of Orchestra for piano there ought to be greater contrasts there ought to be larger Dynamic spans and and and greater changes of Tempe and I was in a barish mood as far as even the 19th century K literature is concerned I was trying to bring a common pulse to to the movements and and to hold things together in that if rather arbitrary nevertheless for me very convinced way it's a very peculiar thing to do it's a very arbitrary thing to do but it works a few days before the performance Bernstein asked G after a rehearsal quote are you sure you're still convinced about the sloth of the piece to which G replied oh more than ever did you hear how wonderfully the tension built I can only tell you it works and it's true there really is something different about how he lets the tension Mount over the three long movements he even managed to reconcile the two4 time of the Hungarian dance in the last movement with the giant pendulum swing of the first two movements [Music] and by the end I think G had come as close to succeeding in his unifying Mission as he could have hoped for at least with an 80 piece orchestra playing with him but the point is not whether G pulled it off it's that he was trying it all in the first place and by doing so he was questioning some of the Sacred cows of classical music Gould wrote that the purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is rather the gradual lifelong construction of a state of Wonder and serenity in his recordings gold sought to overcome our basis instincts and encourage a kind of altered state of consciousness a participation in some kind of higher unity and just like it sounds it's totally psychedelic and you have to listen [Music] to this day Gould is still too often dismissed within classical circles as the Oddball who sang while he played and chat on a few Mozart sonatas but too few have bothered to really try and understand where G was coming from and what he stood for because in my opinion it's just too threatening to a musical practice that has served a religious function in so many musicians lives for so long gradually the whole movement took off very thing to do very arbitrary thing to do but it works I can only tell you it works and that brings us back to brahs gold and Bernstein have finally reached the third movement Cota when nearly an hour of pulsating energy culminates in a sudden abrupt halt listen to [Music] this what I mean what happened uh nobody ever hold the formata that long uh the silence is just unbelievably suspenseful there and it's like the music's Collective heart has skipped like eight beats so let's listen [Music] [Music] again G's silence poses a question what is the fate of this giant living breathing musical organism well I'll let the music answer that for [Music] [Music] itself [Applause]

Channel: Ben Laude

Views: 371,810

Keywords: ben laude, tonebase, glenn gould, leonard bernstein, brahms, brahms d minor concerto, new york philharmonic, new york times, harold schonberg, vladimir horowitz, claudio arrau, krystian zimerman, arved ashby, william james, bach goldberg variations, beethoven sonata, mozart sonata, hammerklavier, aesthetics, music philosophy, carnegie hall, yunchan lim, seymour bernstein

Id: ei18TjGnOjA

Length: 34min 8sec (2048 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2024