Glenn Gould Playing with Others

Glenn Gould and Leonard Rose on the cover of the original album of their recording of Bach’s gamba sonatas (from the Amazon.com Web page for this single album)

I am now ready to discuss the second of the four categories into which I have sorted the 30 CDs in Sony’s The Bach Box accounting for recordings of Glenn Gould playing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. In describing those four categories, I called this one “plays well with others,” suggesting that the description might be questionable. This is a relatively small collection consisting of four concerto albums and three of duo performances with cellist Leonard Rose and violinist Jaime Laredo.

Those familiar with Gould’s career as a concert performer know that it did not last very long. Having “paid his dues” with an initial round of performances in Canada, he distinguished himself as the first North American to tour the Soviet Union in 1957. Ironically, Gould seemed to have a preference for television in New York, making his debut on January 30, 1960, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic on the CBS “culture program” Ford Presents. The selection was Bach’s BWV 1052 concerto in D minor, which Gould had recorded with Bernstein on April 11, 1957. (This was one of those Columbia releases that named the ensemble as the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.)

My guess is that there would be little disagreement over the proposition that Bach was never one of Bernstein’s “strong suits.” As a result, in making the recording of BWV 1052, Bernstein was probably content to let Gould have his way and just make sure that all of the ripieno passages fit properly into to their allotted spaces. In the context of some of Gould’s other recordings, this concerto emerges as being more satisfying than one might have expected. After all, Bach himself probably used his concertos as a platform for showing off his talents during his “jam sessions” at Gottfried Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig; so Gould had every right to do the same sort of thing in Columbia’s recording studio. The same can be said of the seven other concerto recordings all made with Vladimir Golschmann conducting that same Columbia Symphony Orchestra. (Two of those recordings are of BWV 1056 in F minor.)

On the first two of the Columbia albums the Bach concertos are preceded by the two earliest published concertos by Ludwig van Beethoven. On the Bernstein album, BWV 1052 is preceded by Beethoven’s Opus 19 (second) concerto in B-flat major. On the first of the Golschmann albums, BWV 1056 is preceded by Opus 15 in C major. When playing for Bernstein, Gould seems content to “play well with others” in his approach to Beethoven. On the other hand he prepared his own cadenzas for Opus 15, making it abundantly clearly that he had his own approach to playing Beethoven. Perhaps one might view Gould’s effort to out-Beethoven Beethoven as following up on the composer’s efforts to out-Haydn Haydn!

The duo performances, on the other hand, do not go down with quite as much potential satisfaction. Gould accompanies Rose in the three sonatas originally composed for gamba and keyboard (BWV 1027–1029). Those familiar with the performances that Bach intended are likely to find the cello-piano version more than a little disorienting. Nevertheless, like the concertos, these sonatas may have been “source material” for jamming at the Café Zimmermann; but, if that was the case, Rose was more than a little too staid in playing his parts. For better or worse, Gould chose not to step on Rose’s toes in his accompaniment work.

On the other hand Gould is much more of a show-off in accompanying Laredo in the BWV 1014–1019 violin sonatas. Some of that stylization has to do with Bach providing only a figured bass accompaniment for some of the movement, which Gould interpreted as free rein to embellish as much as he saw fit. Laredo was definitely a good sport in providing a melodic line above Gould’s excesses. For my money, however, this is music that would go down better with a stein of beer than with a cup of coffee!