Notes
Entrusted to me were Garbo’s ‘notes’.
Years before they were published I came across this entry that I found rather peculiar in that I heard a voice I hadn’t heard before, a plaintive probing voice. Judge for yourself:
“Some time ago I saw an interview by ‘x’ with Glenn Gould. The interviewer asked him why he chose to re-record the Goldberg Variations. Remember that his original recording some twenty plus years earlier was what brought a heretofore unknown Canadian pianist to the forefront of the classical music’s world in terms of a profound musical interpretation of what had been considered Bach’s exercises for piano studies.
Gould’s foundation was therefore challenged by Gould himself. Those hearing the new recording were confused by the ostensible contradiction in interpretations. The two were said by some to be analogous to the physicist’s apparent quandary whether to describe light as wave or particle. So I was most fascinated by what Gould himself would say. I ask you to forgive my paraphrase but I believe it is close enough.
Gould said, ‘Ahh, There was a good deal of PIANO PLAYING on that early recording and I don’t mean that in a good way’.
I have puzzled over what Gould called piano playing and what he much later believed to be the very deepest expression.
Today I saw a painting show at the Getty Museum of some of the finest works by Jean-Leone Gerome. And I found his work most intoxicating, and as satisfying as many of us found in Gould’s first recording of the ‘Variations’.
The Gerome show was on loan at the Getty, but on this same day I saw, in the permanent collection at the Norton Simon Museum a Rembrandt self-portrait.
I spent some time this evening thinking about Gerome, Gould, Bach, Rembrandt and somehow without belittling Gerome I felt the difference between Great Painting and the depth of a great soul showing itself. Do you follow me?
