Cheap Goetz: Complete Works for Solo Piano (Music) (Hermann Goetz, Adrian Ruiz) Price

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Customer Reviews of Goetz: Complete Works for Solo Piano

I hadn't, either, until the mid-70s, when Genesis Records, Inc., those incredibly enterprising champions of obscure Romantic composers, released the vinyl of the present CD, performed by Adrian Ruiz, the champion of obscure Romantic piano works. At that time, I was the Classical Record Manager for a local Sam Goody's (Massapequa, NY) and one of the perks, naturally, besides my $92-per-week salary, was the ability to eyeball the newest classical acquisitions. (You know, rather like being able to "sample" the Thanksgiving turkey... because you're the carver?)

Well, I didn't waste much time buying the Goetz (almost twenty-five years ago!) and scurrying home to listen to same.

It was love-at-first-hearing.

And, until Genesis reincarnated the vinyl to CD, I held onto the record for dear life... piano music mavin I am.

It's not just me, though, really: the music Goetz has written for piano is simply wonderful. Heartfelt. Romantic. Contagious. Thoughtful. Fresh, entirely original and... gentle.

Yes, gentle.

Goetz lived such a short life--- most of his adult years spent suffering bouts of tuberculosis; yet never did he surrender his spirit to the disease. He loved to compose outdoors, to feel the wind on his face, smell the mountain air, gaze at the sky. He would not be earthbound.

What all this blathering amounts to is this: When we are impressed and moved by music, we want to share our feelings immediately. I think this is, primarily, what Goetz held in his heart. What we hear, and what is so attractive about his music, is, well, Goetz. The man, not the composer. We "hear" the man. So self-effacing, so fragile was he that I believe his sole reason to compose was to communicate.

Of course, I'm not ridiculously naive here: all composers want to communicate, obviously. But with Goetz, unlike our greatest composers, we're not dealing with a massive ego.

This is what makes his music great, not small.

In these pieces which comprise his entire ouvre for piano, we see the man, "warts and all," emotionally exposed (but not disturbed), hopeful, fearful, melancholy and joyous--- the compleat Romantic.

In these works with titles like "Fresh Out in the World," "Solitude," "With You!," "Ye Fleeting Winds, Where to, Where to?," "Auf Wiedersehen," and "Through Field and Halls of Beech," we hear more than piano music alone.

We hear Goetz, the gentlest of German souls, speaking: poignant and tragic, mellow and life-affirming.

"Out, brief candle."

In this beautiful music, we hear a beautiful human, a composer most of us have never heard of... and, now, we can never forget, never let go.