Question for all of you Glenn Gould fans ...

Hi Pragmatist - we ARE fortunate to have his recordings warts and all. The humming doesn't bother me in the least. I guess the thing that bothers me the most is that often within a CD, certain pieces or movements of pieces are clearly either played on different pianos or the piano was tuned to different "A"s between takes. OR, the "speed" of the recording tape machines was different. There is one moment in the Bb partita where he finishes one movt. and then the next movt. is almost a 1/4 tone higher. On the Well-Tempered Clavier recordings he is clearing playing 2 different pianos on both books of WTC. Granted there isn't much you can do about this when re-mastering.

I agree with you on the 55 Goldberg. I find the latter recording "too" mannered even for Gould's playing.
Anyway, I love my Gould CDs. I just thought maybe the SONY remasters might have addressed some of these issues.

Pragmatist. I have a GG recording of Mozart piano sonatas (LP). I don't know who recorded it since I'm at work now. Picked it up for a couple bucks (shows a painting of mozart at the keyboard on the cover). I hear him humming clearly, but only at certain parts it is prominent. The playing is really magical though. What talent. I don't mind the humming at all. I like the warts sometimes.

Thanks Aida. I will definitely check that one out.

Think about playing piano for a moment. By developing eye-hand coordination,an intelligent deaf mute could learn to play Bach. With practice,you can read the music and push the right keys;you can press the right keys and write down the music.

Now,consider developing eye-hand-ear coordination. When you manipulate your fingers(hands),you can hear the notes and write the music. When you see the music,you can press the keys and hear the sounds in your head. When you hear the notes in you head,you can see the notes in your mind and know which fingers to push.

Glenn Gould used to drive his sound engineers nuts because he sang along with his playing-his ears were connected to his hands and eyes. The connections were communitave,in a mathmatical sense.

My point? The original cd s are closer to what Gould actually recorded-humming and all. Gould was one of the outstanding Bach players of the 20th century and we are fortunate to have his recordings-warts and all.

In addition to his Goldburg Variations(both versions-I prefer the '55s even if it's an antiquated recording),his French Suites and English Suites are great.

"A State of Wonder" - that's the title of a Sony release of the Goldberg-Variationen. This CD sounds MUCH better than the CBS stuff - because (according to the booklet) they used an analogue tape which originallly had been run for backup! But CD gear in that time wasn't quite good yet. So Sony did this tripple CD that way and it's fantastic. CD 1: Goldberg 1955, CD 2 Goldberg 1981 and CD 3 interviews. Highly recommendable!