“Admit it, Mr. Gould, you don’t have doubts about Brahms”
quoted from the booklet
====
“Admit it, Mr. Gould, you don’t have doubts about Brahms”
Being Volume One, Number Two of the complete Gould-Gould conversations.
Glenn Gould: Sexy, isn’t it?
Glenn gould: Pardon me?!
GG: I said, “Sexy, isn’t it?”
gg: Yes, I thought that’s what you said, Mr. Gould – but…
GG: But what? It’s the sexiest interpretation of Brahm’s Intermezzi you’ve ever heard, don’ t you agree?
gg: Well, I really don’t know whether this adjective…
GG: Come now, Glenn, Don’t be such a prude!
gg: You have the nerve to say that to me, Mr. Gould?! You of all people? You who’ve so often described yourself as ”the last Puritan”? You with your scetic, totally withdrawn life and your almost pathological fear of closeness and physical contact?!
GG: You’re exaggerating, Glenn: after all, I’m sitting here opposite you – quite close to you. I can even reach out and touch you, if you…
gg: Don’t, Heaven’s sake!
GG: But I thought we were here to discuss my Brahms interpretations, not the way I live.
gg: Of course – it was just that word you used…
GG: Sexy?
gg: Yes… I can’t think of any composer to whom it’s less suited than Johannes Brahms.
GG: That’s your problem, Glenn.
gg: But could you perhaps try to describe your recording of the Intermezz – it was made in 1960, I believe?
GG: Between September and November 1960, yes.
gg: Well, could you describe this recording in some other way?
GG: “I have captured, I think, an atmosphere of improvisation which I don’t believe has ever been represented in Brahms recordings before. There is a quality as though this weren’t an original comment, but something one of my friends said – as though I were really playing for myself, but left the door open.” Satisfied?
gg: Thank you, yes. You seem to like the record a lot…?
GG: ”Yes, I love it. This is one of the things I am most proud of, and I really think it is perhaps the best piano playing I have done. But I think a lot of people are going to hate it…”
gg: Well, I’m certainly not one of them, Mr. Gould: I readily admit that what I like about this interpretation is its total introversion, with brief outbursts of searing pain culminating in long stretches of muted grief, its restraint in matters of dynamics and tempo, a restraint which extends to the frontiers of silence, and its slow and tentative groping towards such fragile music which, sustained by atmosphere of improvisation.
GG: Rubbish – do you know why you like this recording, Glenn?
gg: Well?
GG: Because it’s so sexy.
gg: I scarcely think so, but, be that as it may, I imagine there will have been not a few people (including initially even myself, I freely admit) who were somewhat astonished, not to say taken aback, when you recording of Brahm’s Intermezzi appeared in 1961…
GG: You think it’s because it was so…
gg: Listen, Mr. Gould. I have to say, in all honesty, that you obsessions… but perhaps we could just agree that you avoid using this adjective…
GG: You mean ”sexy”?
gg: That you avoid using this adjective for the rest of our conversation?
GG: OK, Glenn, of course, just as you wish.
gg: I’m most obliged to you. And so, to get back to my question…
GG: Youwere ”somewhat astonished, not to say taken aback, by my Brahms recording” – which is , in fact, not so much a question as an observation.
gg: But you know what I mean.
GG: To be honest, no.
gg: Then may I remind you of a letter you wrote shortly after the recording was released? I quote: “I think that you will be quite surprised not only with the repertoire but also the style of piano playing which is, if I might say so, rather aristocratic.” It was sense of surprise that I was thinking of when I…
GG: You spoke of being “astonished” and “taken back”.
gg: It’s the same thing.
GG: No, it’s not: you see, Glenn, it’s quite possible to be “astonished” or “taken back” without…
gg: Mr. Gould!
GG: Hm?
gg: Could you stick to the point? Please!
GG: You mean stick to my “surprise”?
gg: To the “surprise” you spoke of in your letter.
GG: You mean “wrote about”.
gg: Please!
GG: All right, all right!
gg: Well?
GG: “Come to think of it, I don’t really think you will be surprised either. You know what an incurable romantic I am anyway.”
gg: You’re a what?!
GG: An incurable romantic – it’s in the letter you’ve just been quoting…
gg: Where?
GG: Here – the very next sentence. You see?
gg: Indeed.
GG: “Basically, I’m the most romantic person imaginable.” That’s another quotation. You’ll find it in an interview I gave to The Toronto Star in March 1959.
gg: But you can’t be serious, Mr. Gould!
GG: Why not? Wait, I think I’ve got the piece here…
gg: No, not the interview – I mean what you said about being a romantic.
GG: I’m perfectly serious! And if you don’t believe me, Glenn, let me remind you of an essay by a German music critic by the name of Joachim Kaiser, who described me as ”Glenn Gould – the last romantic pianist assoluto.”
gg: “Incurable”, eh?
GG: Why do you think I recorded the Brahms Intermezzi then?
gg: But, Mr. Gould, you’ve also recorded all the Mozart’s sonatas and at the same time claimed that Mozart is a “melodiocre composer… who died too late rather than too early”…
GG: What does Mozart, a Viennese Classical, have to do with the fact I see myself as a romantic?
gg: Nothing, of course, except that…
GG: Well then! And, in any case, I’ve recorded not only the Brahms Intermezzi but also, as you know, the four Ballades, op. 10 and the two Rhapsodies, op. 79.
GG: Fine!
gg: Tell me, Mr. Gould, when did you first discover that you… that you were a … romantic?
GG: You say the word as though it were some disgusting illness that people prefer not to mention by name. Like that adjective that I’m not allowed to use any more.
gg: That’s not an answer to my question.
GG: when did I first realize that I was a romantic?
gg: Or put it another way: when did you first become interested in Brahms?
GG: While I was still a teenager. The first time I played any Brahms – in fact it was some of the intermezzi – was at a recital in Toronto on February 10, 1952; I was nineteen at the time. And during the next eight years – until the time I made the recording – a selection of Brahms’s Intermezzi was standard fare at many of my piano recitals.
gg: Have you also accompanied Brahms lieder?
GG: No, unfortunately not – but I’ve played chamber music with piano. The first time – wait… yes, the first time was in 1953, when I recorded the A major Violin Sonata, op. 100 for CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). The next time was in August 1957, when I did a live recording of the Piano Quintet, op. 34 with the Montreal String quartet. And then a complete Brahms programme at the Stratford Festival on July 16, 1961, with Oscar Shumsky and Leonard Rose: the Third Piano Trio, the first Violin Sonata and the First Cello Sonata.
gg: And the First Piano Concerto.
GG: Yes, Indeed.
gg: But none of it on record?
GG: No, none at all.
gg: why the Intermezzi in particular?
GG: I’ve already said that the “atmosphere of improvisation” in this music…
gg: And the other late piano pieces? And the Three Sonatas? The Handel and Panganini Variations?
GG: ”Pianists’ music” – ugh!
gg: Was that the reason why, for years after your withdrawal from the concert platform, you refused to have anything to do with Brahms?
GG: Oh, there are a couple of out-takes of the second Rhapsody and a few of the Intermezzi, which I recorded December 10,1971.
gg: Did you then think seriously of making studio recording?
GG: For a short time, certainly, yes. Do you know, Glenn, “I only do things that I really want to do and care deeply about. In that way, you don’t work matter-of factly, but care passionately about each project and get tremendously involved.”
gg: And your passion for Brahms…
GG: … had suddenly cooled. Don’t ask me why.
gg: Until one day a wonderfully handsome fairy-tale prince by the name of Samuel H. Carter came and woke sleeping Beauty with a kiss!
GG: You mean the Ballades and Rhapsodies?
gg: Or wasn’t it Carter who, as producer with Columbia, persuaded you to make this recording in 1981 or ‘82?
GG: To be honest, Glenn, I no longer remember. It was ten months since I’d made my last recording – my second recording of the Goldberg Variations in May 1981 – and Carter was of course pestering me and asking for idea. With the best will in the world, I can’t remember any longer whether it was he who first brought up the name of Brahms or whether it was me.
gg: The recording took place in February ’82, didn’t it?
GG: The recording of the Ballades, yes. “I’d never played them before – never sight-read them – and (apart from the first them, which many of my fellow students had had a go at) I’d never heard them in the concert hall either, when I decided to make the recording. I took the decision around two months before the recording sessions were due to begin and during the next six weeks I glanced at the music from time to time, until I had a clear idea of how I wanted to tackle the Ballades. But as for playing them, it wasn’t until two weeks before the recording that I sat down at the piano, working on average no more than one hour a day, as I usually did before recording session.”
gg: And you expect me to believe that, Mr. Gould?!
GG: ”At some point there comes a time when you’ve understood the conditions involved and, as it were, put them into cold storage so that you can call on them again at any time. Ultimately, you play the piano not with your fingers but with your head. I know that sounds terribly simple and obvious cliché, but it’s the truth. When you’ve a perfectly clear idea of what you want to do, there’s not the slightest reason to reinforce that idea by practicing. If you don’t have it, not all the Czerny studies and all the Hanon finger exercises in the world will be able to help you.”
gg: Two weeks before the recording, for an hour a day!
GG: It was more than enough, Glenn – believe me. “In that one hour I could play through all four Ballades twice – they last more or less thirty minutes – and at the same time consider whatever changes needed to be made to my concept. In addition – need less or to say – there were the dozens of occasions when I through the Ballades in my head, during lengthy car journeys or in my apartment, where I in any case do most of my ’work’.”
gg: And everything passed off smoothly?
GG: Everything passed off smoothly, just as it did a couple of months later, at the end of June and beginning of July 1982, when we recorded the two Rhapsodies as fill-up.
gg: It’s hard to credit!
GG: But that’s how it was.
gg: And this music or, rather, your interpretation of it naturally reflects the way you see yourself as an ”incurable romantic”?
GG: Not only that, Glenn – not only that!
gg: You’re saying that you…
GG: Yes, yes: I find it extremely sexy!
Note: Among Gould’s writings are two famous “self-Interviews”. The first, Admit it, Mr. Gould, You Do Have Doubts About Beethoven, appeared in the 1970 Guelph Spring festival programme booklet; the second, Glenn Gould Interviews Glenn Gould about Glenn Gould, was published in High Fidelity Magazine in February 1974 under the title, Being Volume One, Number One of the Complete Gould-Gould conversations. It is hoped that Gould will forgive the present author for succumbing to the temptation of presenting the foregoing pastiche – some of which Is based on existing material – as a factitious sequel to the 1974 conversation.
Michael Stegemann
Translation: 1993 Stewart Spencer
====
“Admit it, Mr. Gould, you don’t have doubts about Brahms”
Being Volume One, Number Two of the complete Gould-Gould conversations.
Glenn Gould: Sexy, isn’t it?
Glenn gould: Pardon me?!
GG: I said, “Sexy, isn’t it?”
gg: Yes, I thought that’s what you said, Mr. Gould – but…
GG: But what? It’s the sexiest interpretation of Brahm’s Intermezzi you’ve ever heard, don’ t you agree?
gg: Well, I really don’t know whether this adjective…
GG: Come now, Glenn, Don’t be such a prude!
gg: You have the nerve to say that to me, Mr. Gould?! You of all people? You who’ve so often described yourself as ”the last Puritan”? You with your scetic, totally withdrawn life and your almost pathological fear of closeness and physical contact?!
GG: You’re exaggerating, Glenn: after all, I’m sitting here opposite you – quite close to you. I can even reach out and touch you, if you…
gg: Don’t, Heaven’s sake!
GG: But I thought we were here to discuss my Brahms interpretations, not the way I live.
gg: Of course – it was just that word you used…
GG: Sexy?
gg: Yes… I can’t think of any composer to whom it’s less suited than Johannes Brahms.
GG: That’s your problem, Glenn.
gg: But could you perhaps try to describe your recording of the Intermezz – it was made in 1960, I believe?
GG: Between September and November 1960, yes.
gg: Well, could you describe this recording in some other way?
GG: “I have captured, I think, an atmosphere of improvisation which I don’t believe has ever been represented in Brahms recordings before. There is a quality as though this weren’t an original comment, but something one of my friends said – as though I were really playing for myself, but left the door open.” Satisfied?
gg: Thank you, yes. You seem to like the record a lot…?
GG: ”Yes, I love it. This is one of the things I am most proud of, and I really think it is perhaps the best piano playing I have done. But I think a lot of people are going to hate it…”
gg: Well, I’m certainly not one of them, Mr. Gould: I readily admit that what I like about this interpretation is its total introversion, with brief outbursts of searing pain culminating in long stretches of muted grief, its restraint in matters of dynamics and tempo, a restraint which extends to the frontiers of silence, and its slow and tentative groping towards such fragile music which, sustained by atmosphere of improvisation.
GG: Rubbish – do you know why you like this recording, Glenn?
gg: Well?
GG: Because it’s so sexy.
gg: I scarcely think so, but, be that as it may, I imagine there will have been not a few people (including initially even myself, I freely admit) who were somewhat astonished, not to say taken aback, when you recording of Brahm’s Intermezzi appeared in 1961…
GG: You think it’s because it was so…
gg: Listen, Mr. Gould. I have to say, in all honesty, that you obsessions… but perhaps we could just agree that you avoid using this adjective…
GG: You mean ”sexy”?
gg: That you avoid using this adjective for the rest of our conversation?
GG: OK, Glenn, of course, just as you wish.
gg: I’m most obliged to you. And so, to get back to my question…
GG: Youwere ”somewhat astonished, not to say taken aback, by my Brahms recording” – which is , in fact, not so much a question as an observation.
gg: But you know what I mean.
GG: To be honest, no.
gg: Then may I remind you of a letter you wrote shortly after the recording was released? I quote: “I think that you will be quite surprised not only with the repertoire but also the style of piano playing which is, if I might say so, rather aristocratic.” It was sense of surprise that I was thinking of when I…
GG: You spoke of being “astonished” and “taken back”.
gg: It’s the same thing.
GG: No, it’s not: you see, Glenn, it’s quite possible to be “astonished” or “taken back” without…
gg: Mr. Gould!
GG: Hm?
gg: Could you stick to the point? Please!
GG: You mean stick to my “surprise”?
gg: To the “surprise” you spoke of in your letter.
GG: You mean “wrote about”.
gg: Please!
GG: All right, all right!
gg: Well?
GG: “Come to think of it, I don’t really think you will be surprised either. You know what an incurable romantic I am anyway.”
gg: You’re a what?!
GG: An incurable romantic – it’s in the letter you’ve just been quoting…
gg: Where?
GG: Here – the very next sentence. You see?
gg: Indeed.
GG: “Basically, I’m the most romantic person imaginable.” That’s another quotation. You’ll find it in an interview I gave to The Toronto Star in March 1959.
gg: But you can’t be serious, Mr. Gould!
GG: Why not? Wait, I think I’ve got the piece here…
gg: No, not the interview – I mean what you said about being a romantic.
GG: I’m perfectly serious! And if you don’t believe me, Glenn, let me remind you of an essay by a German music critic by the name of Joachim Kaiser, who described me as ”Glenn Gould – the last romantic pianist assoluto.”
gg: “Incurable”, eh?
GG: Why do you think I recorded the Brahms Intermezzi then?
gg: But, Mr. Gould, you’ve also recorded all the Mozart’s sonatas and at the same time claimed that Mozart is a “melodiocre composer… who died too late rather than too early”…
GG: What does Mozart, a Viennese Classical, have to do with the fact I see myself as a romantic?
gg: Nothing, of course, except that…
GG: Well then! And, in any case, I’ve recorded not only the Brahms Intermezzi but also, as you know, the four Ballades, op. 10 and the two Rhapsodies, op. 79.
GG: Fine!
gg: Tell me, Mr. Gould, when did you first discover that you… that you were a … romantic?
GG: You say the word as though it were some disgusting illness that people prefer not to mention by name. Like that adjective that I’m not allowed to use any more.
gg: That’s not an answer to my question.
GG: when did I first realize that I was a romantic?
gg: Or put it another way: when did you first become interested in Brahms?
GG: While I was still a teenager. The first time I played any Brahms – in fact it was some of the intermezzi – was at a recital in Toronto on February 10, 1952; I was nineteen at the time. And during the next eight years – until the time I made the recording – a selection of Brahms’s Intermezzi was standard fare at many of my piano recitals.
gg: Have you also accompanied Brahms lieder?
GG: No, unfortunately not – but I’ve played chamber music with piano. The first time – wait… yes, the first time was in 1953, when I recorded the A major Violin Sonata, op. 100 for CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). The next time was in August 1957, when I did a live recording of the Piano Quintet, op. 34 with the Montreal String quartet. And then a complete Brahms programme at the Stratford Festival on July 16, 1961, with Oscar Shumsky and Leonard Rose: the Third Piano Trio, the first Violin Sonata and the First Cello Sonata.
gg: And the First Piano Concerto.
GG: Yes, Indeed.
gg: But none of it on record?
GG: No, none at all.
gg: why the Intermezzi in particular?
GG: I’ve already said that the “atmosphere of improvisation” in this music…
gg: And the other late piano pieces? And the Three Sonatas? The Handel and Panganini Variations?
GG: ”Pianists’ music” – ugh!
gg: Was that the reason why, for years after your withdrawal from the concert platform, you refused to have anything to do with Brahms?
GG: Oh, there are a couple of out-takes of the second Rhapsody and a few of the Intermezzi, which I recorded December 10,1971.
gg: Did you then think seriously of making studio recording?
GG: For a short time, certainly, yes. Do you know, Glenn, “I only do things that I really want to do and care deeply about. In that way, you don’t work matter-of factly, but care passionately about each project and get tremendously involved.”
gg: And your passion for Brahms…
GG: … had suddenly cooled. Don’t ask me why.
gg: Until one day a wonderfully handsome fairy-tale prince by the name of Samuel H. Carter came and woke sleeping Beauty with a kiss!
GG: You mean the Ballades and Rhapsodies?
gg: Or wasn’t it Carter who, as producer with Columbia, persuaded you to make this recording in 1981 or ‘82?
GG: To be honest, Glenn, I no longer remember. It was ten months since I’d made my last recording – my second recording of the Goldberg Variations in May 1981 – and Carter was of course pestering me and asking for idea. With the best will in the world, I can’t remember any longer whether it was he who first brought up the name of Brahms or whether it was me.
gg: The recording took place in February ’82, didn’t it?
GG: The recording of the Ballades, yes. “I’d never played them before – never sight-read them – and (apart from the first them, which many of my fellow students had had a go at) I’d never heard them in the concert hall either, when I decided to make the recording. I took the decision around two months before the recording sessions were due to begin and during the next six weeks I glanced at the music from time to time, until I had a clear idea of how I wanted to tackle the Ballades. But as for playing them, it wasn’t until two weeks before the recording that I sat down at the piano, working on average no more than one hour a day, as I usually did before recording session.”
gg: And you expect me to believe that, Mr. Gould?!
GG: ”At some point there comes a time when you’ve understood the conditions involved and, as it were, put them into cold storage so that you can call on them again at any time. Ultimately, you play the piano not with your fingers but with your head. I know that sounds terribly simple and obvious cliché, but it’s the truth. When you’ve a perfectly clear idea of what you want to do, there’s not the slightest reason to reinforce that idea by practicing. If you don’t have it, not all the Czerny studies and all the Hanon finger exercises in the world will be able to help you.”
gg: Two weeks before the recording, for an hour a day!
GG: It was more than enough, Glenn – believe me. “In that one hour I could play through all four Ballades twice – they last more or less thirty minutes – and at the same time consider whatever changes needed to be made to my concept. In addition – need less or to say – there were the dozens of occasions when I through the Ballades in my head, during lengthy car journeys or in my apartment, where I in any case do most of my ’work’.”
gg: And everything passed off smoothly?
GG: Everything passed off smoothly, just as it did a couple of months later, at the end of June and beginning of July 1982, when we recorded the two Rhapsodies as fill-up.
gg: It’s hard to credit!
GG: But that’s how it was.
gg: And this music or, rather, your interpretation of it naturally reflects the way you see yourself as an ”incurable romantic”?
GG: Not only that, Glenn – not only that!
gg: You’re saying that you…
GG: Yes, yes: I find it extremely sexy!
Note: Among Gould’s writings are two famous “self-Interviews”. The first, Admit it, Mr. Gould, You Do Have Doubts About Beethoven, appeared in the 1970 Guelph Spring festival programme booklet; the second, Glenn Gould Interviews Glenn Gould about Glenn Gould, was published in High Fidelity Magazine in February 1974 under the title, Being Volume One, Number One of the Complete Gould-Gould conversations. It is hoped that Gould will forgive the present author for succumbing to the temptation of presenting the foregoing pastiche – some of which Is based on existing material – as a factitious sequel to the 1974 conversation.
Michael Stegemann
Translation: 1993 Stewart Spencer
