Oh, to have been a fly on the wall

Once again, Arts & Letters Daily turns up a gem of an essay, this time from The American Scholar written by Sudip Bose - and no, me neither!  In it, Mr. Bose takes us back to the Carnegie Hall in 1962 when Leonard Bernstein was preparing to conduct the New York Philharmonic in a performance of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 to be played by, er, well, Glenn Gould, actually!  Now my knowledge of music plumbs depths of ignorance far beyond anything else I scribble about here but even I have heard that the late Mr. Gould was, shall we say, eccentric - or a 'right on' musical nutter - you choose!

Certainly Glenn Gould interpreted the 'music of the masters' in his own, idiosyncratic way, where-as Bernstein, equally opinionated, saw (or heard) things very differently.  The rehearsals must have been exquisite agony for everyone concerned.  Gould, for example, insisted that music be played very much slower than was normally expected.  Bernstein disagreed but eventually demurred in favour of his soloist.  However, on the night of the performance he broke with custom and turning on his rostrum he addressed the audience, in effect, giving them warning of this very new and somewhat eccentric interpretation.

The critics, needless to say, were outraged - so not all bad then!

 

Comments

[Bob]

The article goes far into the symphonic weeds. However, it does remind me that at one time there were classical music stars well known to the general public. There were Bernstein, Gould, Itzhak Perlman, Leopold Stokowski, Pablo Casals, E. Power Biggs and many others. Some would often show up on TV talk shows. Probably the closest we have now are Joshua Bell and Yo-Yo Ma. Since the 1960's classical music has become far less popular. One of Chicago's two all-classical radio stations went out of business years ago. WFMT, home to the CSO, is still going strong though, and can be streamed from the internet:

https://www.wfmt.com/

[Whitewall]

Bob, you touched on a favorite of my late Mother's and mine as well when you wrote E. Power Biggs! Still to this day! We have several classical music stations that serve my region...WFDD on the Wake Forest University campus and WDAV on the Davidson College campus. WFDD still carries the Winston-Salem Piedmont symphony I believe. Not quite Chicago but still. Biggs was born in England but moved to the the US in 1930.

[Bob]

Whitewall, I never saw him live, but people who did told me Biggs wore shoes with mirrors on them the stage techs bounced spot lights off of so everyone could see how fast his feet were moving on the organ pedals. Take that, Liberace.

One of my favorite classical stations is WCPE from the research triangle in Raleigh. You can stream it from the web.