1955 Goldberg Vars Bwv988

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Composer : Johann Sebastian Bach
Performer : Glenn Gould

Product Details

Binding : Audio CD
EAN : 0074645259420
Label : Sony
Number of Discs : 1
Product Group : Music
Release Date : 1992-09-15
Running Time : 46minutes
UPC : 074645259420

ASIN : B0000028NE

Track Listings for

Disc-1
1. Goldberg Variations: Aria
2. Goldberg Variations: Variation 1
3. Goldberg Variations: Variation 2
4. Goldberg Variations: Variation 3
5. Goldberg Variations: Variation 4
6. Goldberg Variations: Variation 5
7. Goldberg Variations: Variation 6
8. Goldberg Variations: Variation 7
9. Goldberg Variations: Variation 8
10. Goldberg Variations: Variation 9
11. Goldberg Variations: Variation 10
12. Goldberg Variations: Variation 11
13. Goldberg Variations: Variation 12
14. Goldberg Variations: Variation 13
15. Goldberg Variations: Variation 14
16. Goldberg Variations: Variation 15
17. Goldberg Variations: Variation 16
18. Goldberg Variations: Variation 17
19. Goldberg Variations: Variation 18
20. Goldberg Variations: Variation 19
21. Goldberg Variations: Variation 20
22. Goldberg Variations: Variation 21
23. Goldberg Variations: Variation 22
24. Goldberg Variations: Variation 23
25. Goldberg Variations: Variation 24
26. Goldberg Variations: Variation 25
27. Goldberg Variations: Variation 26
28. Goldberg Variations: Variation 27
29. Goldberg Variations: Variation 28
30. Goldberg Variations: Variation 29
31. Goldberg Variations: Variation 30
32. Goldberg Variations: Aria da capo
33. Fugue In F-Sharp Minor
34. Fugue In E Major

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Editorial Reviews

From Amazon.com

In the main, sonic differences between Sony Classical's 20-bit remastering of this landmark 1955 recording and its previous incarnation in the CBS Great Performances series (CBS MYK 38479) are subtle rather than striking. Tape hiss is reduced, while ambient studio noise is heightened, bringing Glenn Gould's trademark humming and squeaky chair more into the foreground. One can also perceive slight changes in microphone setups between certain variations. Gould completists, however, will want this Glenn Gould Edition transfer for two fugues recorded in 1957, drastically different from the pianist's perverse remakes 13 years later for his complete Well Tempered Clavier Book II. Any respectable piano collection, however, should include Gould's debut Goldbergs, at any price. --Jed Distler

Customer Reviews

Do you want the Fugues too? (2004-03-25)

I love both of Glenn Gould's versions of Goldberg Variations, the first in 1955 (this one) made him famous, while the last one in 1981 was his swan song. The 1981 version definitely has the fuller modern sound and Gould goes deeper, yet 1955 is historic, the sound is still excellent, and Gould's technique is just amazing! However, this particular packaging includes more than Goldberg Variations. Two fugues from Well Tempered Clavier are added to the end. Good music definitely, but personally, I just want the Goldberg Variations with no additives. If you don't object to the extras, then by all means get this CD. But if you are like me, look for the older "Great Performances" version by CBS/Columbia. It has only Goldberg Variations, with no fugues.

If you are new to Glenn Gould, just remember that even now, twenty years after his death, his work remains controversial. Everyone agrees that he was a masterful pianist, one of the best ever, but many people just don't like his eccentric approach to Bach. They find the fast parts too fast, and slow is too slow. In the 1981 version, many object to Gould's tuneless humming in the background. Eccentric? You bet. But nobody else could even get away with it. "That nut is a genius," as Szell was once heard to quip.

Anyone who finds Gould too eccentric, or perverse, should try Angela Hewitt or Rosalyn Tureck. I love their versions of Goldberg Variations too! Rosalyn Tureck spent her entire career of about 60 years studying Bach, and recorded Goldberg Variations at least three times. All are excellent. Angela Hewitt is just masterful, and plays with sheer devotion.

A powerfull wake-up call (2004-02-14)

From a theorical point of view, art critics in general, across history (I refer here to the "Ancient" versus "Modern" quarrels that, in many ways, are as redundant, since the Renaissance up to know, as the biological generation phenomenon itself) can be distribute and tell apart following two types of argument intrinsically linked to each opposing and corresponding standpoint : whether an artist has to strive in order to reproduce a traditionnally given model, a somewhat dogmatical state of things, only justifiable by refrence to a timeless necessity of confirming one mind to this "already there" good and ideal state of things simultaneously related to a fondational will (Nature, God, the Composer, the Master, etc.) , or whether, at the opposite (or nearly so), artist (and, by extension, ordinary man who lives by some aspects in the wake of avant-garde artists), can, or even must, in order to achieve great works of beauty and imagination, appropriate, transform and re-invent given state of things (including previously inherited artistic forms and medias), integrating to it a new, or different, way of living, of appearing, of expressing - for those now-living at least - the world itself, the human's passions and desperate will to last in this human-made world itself. The first rather stiff, static, rigid picture of the Classics (the "given states of things") which appeared as a premise and as a end of the orthodox (A.Brendel...), pro-Ancient and other neo-platonicists looking back to an original, motionless, merely castrating, selfsufficient purity of the start (the Score, the Book, etc.), this picture strongly contrasts with the one given by the second standpoint : works of art's lives and length both depend on the posterity's hability and availability to invest creativity and imagination in the dynamic, transformative, reciprocal receiving of these works, whoever this posterity and these works are, and precisely because of such an indetermination... Simply stated, such is the background from which I used, since years now, to think and to understand the polemics surrounding Glenn Gould (but also James Joyce) as a 20th century artist, as one of the first artist to engage himself, systematically, in active reinvention processes toward great composers, toward the reception, rendition and transmission of their works, and to go further and further in this reappropriation, recreation of sacro-saint musical canons, over-reproduced in a rather austere, stale and narrowmind posture up to then. At least, the very spirit of baroque art is, in anticipation of the clear-cut, phallic and uncompromising Classical "paradigm" that unfortunately came later, refractory to the docile "reproduction of the same" for which numerous musicians so often wasted their talents while playing (or refusing, for some stupid reasons, to play) Bach in particular. In that sense, Gould's unexpected, unforeseeable appearance with the 1955 Goldberg notably, in the musical history (not less), was, and is still (in the form of a dazzling, fireworking declaration of spiritual freedom relating to the process of receiving and reintroducing life into works that, especially in Bach's case, where widely open at their very inception for such creative, transformative rendition) a powerfull wake-up call for contemporary and succeeding pianistic generations, barely incapable since then of doing as if such an event had not happen, had not transform their way of seeing and doing things now.

Wonderful! (2004-01-29)

This CD is wonderful for properly qualified musicians.

Total trivialization of great music (2003-12-11)

Only Gould can make Bach sound boring. There are so many better selections to choose from, don't buy into the false mystique of Gould. His tempos are perverse, and by ignoring all the repeats he loses most of the unearthly power of the music.

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