CD Reviews

Glenn Gould: The Original Jacket Collection

Sony

By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 20, 2007

4.0 Stars

Glenn Gould

Even when Glenn Gould was not at his best, he was an indispensable artist. No other pianist captured his uncanny combination of the sparkling and the gravely solemn. The recording studio was more important to him than the concert hall. This new bargain-priced 80-CD set of all his Columbia recordings traces the extraordinary range of his 27-year recording career, which began in 1955 with the release of his incandescent version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, still the single most prized performance of this great work. The Goldbergs were also the last recording he released — more autumnal than exhilarating this time, and more controversial. Beethoven is another Gould cornerstone, with 21 sonatas, plus concertos, variations, a marvelous disc of Bagatelles, and one complete symphony (and a movement from another one, both arranged by Liszt). Very early, he made a memorable version of a Haydn Sonata (in E-flat); very late, he recorded six more. He played Mozart with mixed feeling; he said he recorded his last album of Mozart sonatas only to complete the set but found the music worthless. His great loves ranged from Byrd and Gibbons to Berg and Schoenberg. He played surprisingly beautiful and sensitive Brahms, but you won’t find any Schubert or Chopin, and his one Schumann — the Piano Quartet — ended his relationship with the Juilliard String Quartet. His strangest disc must be Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden, on which he accompanies Claude Rains reciting Tennyson’s dramatic narrative. Also fascinating are his own string quartet and a delightful vocal quartet called So You Want To Write a Fugue. The set includes a bonus interview with Washington Post critic Tim Page and CD-sized versions of all his original album covers and liner notes. Even 80 discs won’t unravel Gould’s mysteries, but they’re a reminder that he was one of the most astounding and original musicians who ever recorded.

Related: Variety show, Orchestra in transition, But not simpler, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Music, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, More

| More

ARTICLES BY LLOYD SCHWARTZ

BMOP AND MARK MORRIS | May 31, 2012
As the Globe 's Jeremy Eichler pointed out in his review of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project's season-ending concert — called "Apollo's Fire" — referring to the program note by the BSO's Assistant Director of Program Publications Robert Kirzinger, the term "classical music" has become so all-inclusive that it doesn't have much at all to do with ancient "classical" art.

VERY LIVE AT THE MET | May 21, 2012
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece about the Met in HD, the low-cost screenings of live Metropolitan Opera productions in movie theaters around the world.

HAITINK AND THE BSO, ZANDER AND THE BPO, THE EMERSON QUARTET, THE VORES VIOLIN CONCERTO, AND DONALD TEETERS’S FAREWELL TO BOSTON CECILIA | May 08, 2012
Sometimes you know it the minute you hear it, sometimes it takes a while, sometimes it never happens at all.

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA LIVE TELECASTS | May 08, 2012
Given the high cost of productions and, therefore, the high price of tickets, opera companies have a hard time staying in business.

EMMANUEL’S LATE MOZART, NEC’S EARLY BRITTEN, BSO GUEST CONDUCTORS, AND BOSTON LYRIC OPERA’S THE INSPECTOR | April 24, 2012
By an odd coincidence, two recent events included two of Boston's best-loved singers in non-singing roles, artists who've been teamed in some of Boston's most memorable opera productions: baritone James Maddalena and soprano Susan Larson, essential members of the great Peter Sellars/Craig Smith stock company.