Cheap The Goldberg Variations - Glenn Gould Plays Bach (DVD) (Glenn Gould) (Bruno Monsaingeon) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Goldberg Variations - Glenn Gould Plays Bach

His sort of quirky, pretentioius manner translates to his performance of Bach as you can easily call this the Goldberg Variations for piano and vocal accompaniment. With his sometimes free hand flailing about, humming excessively and out of key, and in an exaggerated crouch with his nose a few inches from the keyboard he looks more like a mad scientist than a concert pianist. The guy's a riot. But I guess that's all part of his appeal.

Anyways, it's all quite entertaining to say the least. And of course anyone who's going to watch this video has already heard Gould perform this work and knows what to expect. I was, however, somewhat surprised at his generous use of the damper pedal. I always found his playing rather dry and percussive and never knew he used the pedal so much. I suppose he incorporated it more during his latter years. Still you get that kind of infectious percussive, rhythmically precise quality that's Gould's trademark.

Stunning
A friend of mine once gave me a copy of Gould's performance of the Golberg Variations to listen to on CD. He said, "listen to it twice -- you won't like it the first time, but listen again and it will become your favorite." He was right. I later realized that upon the first listening it was difficult to make sense of the individual parts of this piece. But after you have a sense of the whole, you can begin to appreciate its complex beauty.

On this DVD, Glenn Gould himself explains that he decided to re-record the piece precisely to emphasize the connection between each of the parts in the Goldberg Variations. The result is remarkable, both in terms of sound quality and the camera movements. The disc contains sound in both PCM stereo and Dolby Digital stereo. Sony did a superb job in making you forget this masterpiece was recorded 20 years ago. And you can't watch Gould play without being drawn yourself into his passion for the music. If you enjoy Bach, this is a must buy.

One nitpick: the extras on this disc are pathetic. You get about 5 minutes worth of interviews with Gould himself, and some on-screen biographical text -- merely glorified liner notes. But this disc isn't about the extras. Let's hope Sony releases more Gould DVDs!

NOT the same soundtrack as the CD!
Although I HEARTILY recommend this DVD, I thought I'd give a heads-up pointing out that the soundtrack on this DVD is NOT the exact same one as Gould's CD of his second generation of Goldberg recordings. The digital CD recording was made simultaneously with a video-taping, but for whatever reasons, the soundtrack of the video/DVD is NOT of the same quality of the CD's digital soundtrack -- the CD being quite superior as far as background noise (aside from Gould's humming of course!) and wow and flutter -- both of which are much more noticeable on the video/DVD. In fact, some of the variations are slightly different "takes" than the CD! I suspected this and it became pretty obvious when I started the CD with the DVD only to find out that by the end of the end of the first Aria things were outta' sync by more than a little!

Anyway, if you DO buy this DVD (and again, I DO recommend it!) be sure you don't overlook the superior sound quality of the CD also! -- Roy