# Gould's Full Columbia Release is Blowing My Mind Right Now



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I mean wow, what emotion, power and control. The highest expression ever seen! Goul is the best recording artist of all time, any genre.


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I mean wow, what emotion, power and control. The highest expression ever seen! Goul is the best recording artist of all time, any genre.


I'd disagree. I admire the clarity of Gould's playing, but it's always seemed cold and mechanical to me too much of the time, or consciously and quirkily odd. He was quite a character though.


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## JTS (Sep 26, 2021)

A remarkable artist certainly. The greatest? There are many others.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Everything he did was nothing short of inspiration!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

The different treatment of GG and LL by classical music enthusiasts today is proof that many of them are still racist at heart.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> The different treatment of GG and LL by classical music enthusiasts today is proof that many of them are still racist at heart.


Nonsense. Any different treatment is based on artistry. I'm surprised you can't tell the difference.


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

I disagree with the Lang Lang comparison, and I probably have less against him than I do Gould. But Gould doesn't seem to have cared all that much about being a "star".


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

JTS said:


> A remarkable artist certainly. The greatest? There are many others.


Amen, not to mention better .


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## FrankinUsa (Aug 3, 2021)

Just my opinion. Gould has always left me cold so I stopped thinking about him many years ago.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> The different treatment of GG and LL by classical music enthusiasts today is proof that many of them are still racist at heart.


Care to explain?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> The different treatment of GG and LL by classical music enthusiasts today is proof that many of them are still racist at heart.


You aren't going to substantiate this?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

janxharris said:


> You aren't going to substantiate this?


Just watch the two videos and try to imagine GG was non-white, LL was white.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> Just watch the two videos and try to imagine GG was non-white, LL was white.


That's pretty nebulous reasoning HK.


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## Wilhelm Theophilus (Aug 8, 2020)

hammeredklavier said:


> Just watch the two videos and try to imagine GG was non-white, LL was white.


only one of them stands up and does kung fu though! :lol:


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## Endeavour (Sep 9, 2021)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I mean wow, what emotion, power and control. The highest expression ever seen! Goul is the best recording artist of all time, any genre.


I agree that Gould had tremendous emotion, power and control. He certainly had a high form of expression and that he was certainly a great recording artist. I don't believe anyone is better than anyone else though. You can certainly have a personal favorite but each artist is unique as was Gould.

For me Gould is anything but cold or mechanical. That's one of those opinions that I can't understand let alone comprehend, but for other people that's what they feel. Such is the nature of human beings.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I think both is true. When Gould was "on" he really got into a piece and I don't think the ecstatic impression one gets from the pictures and movies was fake. 
But in some other pieces he can come across as mechanical and dry on recordings, e.g. some Beethoven and a lot of Mozart sonatas. Listening to his Bach WTC one can get both ecstasy and weirdness.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Kreisler jr said:


> I think both is true. When Gould was "on" he really got into a piece and I don't think the ecstatic impression one gets from the pictures and movies was fake.
> But in some other pieces he can come across as mechanical and dry on recordings, e.g. some Beethoven and a lot of Mozart sonatas. Listening to his Bach WTC one can get both ecstasy and weirdness.


I didn't used to like Gould's Mozart, but now I love the performances. I mean, if I want to "hear Mozart", I listen to Bezuidenhout (my current favorite Mozart interpreter), but Gould is a trip. I've never found a single performance that rivals Gould's WTC. Nobody matches his rhythmic and contrapuntal drive. Having Spotify, I methodically listen to performance after performance, and Schiff (while he can't touch Gould) is my second best. I wish Perahia would perform the WTC. Based on his interpretation of the Goldbergs, I'd bet they'd rival Gould.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I find some of the Mozart weird but interesting. E.g. the famous variations in K 331 are de/re-constructed in an interesting way with the theme played so slow and choppy that one gets the impression of the music being slowly put together and "arriving" only with the last fastish variation, so basically the opposite of theme + variations. 
But other piece, like the Sonata facile K 545 is played in mechanical, almost derogatory fashion as if Gould wanted to make the piece appear as trite and trivial as possible. This is the worst one I remember. It's been a while that I listened to more than small doses of them but most are somewhere between these extremes and overall I found the Mozart interesting enough to keep but I would recommend them only to avid Gould fans or adventurous listeners. 
A few weeks ago I listened to his Beethoven variations and I liked this as much as ever; it's one of my favorite recordings of anything. (I didn't like the bagatelles quite as much as I remembered and wanted to revisit some of his Beethoven sonatas but got distracted into other things.)


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