BACH & GOULD

“My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.” - Edward Elgar

For Music Saturday today some Bach played by the incomparable Glenn Gould. This is the first movement from the Concerto in G Minor for Clavier (BWV 1058). Pseudopurists may wince, but I think the artistry of the performer and the wonderful arrangement would have pleased Bach greatly. Bach was always one for arranging and rearranging both his music and others’. The music flows like a tumbling stream down a mountainside and the conversation between soloist and ensemble is beautiful.

Much was said of Gould and his playing not the least of which his habit of vocalizing the music as he was playing it. All I see is a consummate artist who immerses himself in the music, body and soul. He was born in Toronto in 1932, and enjoyed a privileged, sheltered upbringing in the quiet Beach neighborhood. His musical gifts became apparent in infancy, and though his parents never pushed him to become a star prodigy, he became a professional concert pianist at age fifteen, and soon gained a national reputation. By his early twenties, he was also earning recognition through radio and television broadcasts, recordings, writings, lectures and compositions. Shortly after his fiftieth birthday, Gould died suddenly of a stroke in 1982.