[lbo-talk] Happy Birthday Mozart

[Scissors MacGillicutty]

Agreed. Gould's take on Mozart is bizarre by most standards,
but I think he reveals amazing things in the Sonatas that the
standard way of playing them misses.  I think the axe that Gould
had to grind w/Mozart was that Mozart was a great
countrapunctalist who didn't write counterpoint.  Then there's
the way he played the theme and variations that are the first mvmt
of the A major sonata (K 331): he plays the theme at a glacial place
with what (IIRC) he described as Webern-esque phrasing and then
takes each variation at a faster and faster tempo so that the whole thing
sounds not like variations but successive layerings atop a structure.

I'd bet that if you played any of the Gould interpretations of the Mozart
sonatas in an organic bakery or boutique you'd kill the business, but you'd
have a good number of people piling in just to listen.

smg

On 1/27/06, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Unlike most people
> I really like Glenn Gould's deconstruction of the
> piano sonatas -- sort of Mozart on speed. I like the
> operas, all the way from The Magic Flute to Don
> Giovanni.