I can scarcely believe what I stumbled across this evening: a clip of archive footage of Glenn Gould recording the third movement of Bach's Italian Concerto. I have been studying this piece for a long time and even simply following the score while listening to a 'real' pianist playing it makes my head hurt. Actually trying to play it half-decently is, well, daunting to say the least!
This particular example of Bach's limitless invention involved scoring a complete concerto for solo harpsichord using the piano and forte manuals of a two-manual harpsichord to voice the contrasting instrumental groupings. Played on the piano the left and right hands accompany one another with the melodic line shifting back and forth between them and the accompaniment (lower staff) alternating from the bass clef to treble clef and back again.
I found this footage utterly compelling for a multitude of reasons. Rather than bore you with them I can only recommend you check it out for yourselves here. Absolutely jaw-droppingly, humblingly, mind-blowingly, paradigm-shiftingly, hair-raisingly, life-enhancingly spell-binding.
Please, please, please invest 7'51" of your lives to watch this.
PS Can anybody make out the 'preferred beverage' Gould takes a slug of before attacking the ivories?
I can scarcely believe what I stumbled across this evening: a clip of archive footage of Glenn Gould recording the third movement of Bach's Italian Concerto. I have been studying this piece for a long time and even simply following the score while listening to a 'real' pianist playing it makes my head hurt. Actually trying to play it half-decently is, well, daunting to say the least!
This particular example of Bach's limitless invention involved scoring a complete concerto for solo harpsichord using the piano and forte manuals of a two-manual harpsichord to voice the contrasting instrumental groupings. Played on the piano the left and right hands accompany one another with the melodic line shifting back and forth between them and the accompaniment (lower staff) alternating from the bass clef to treble clef and back again.
I found this footage utterly compelling for a multitude of reasons. Rather than bore you with them I can only recommend you check it out for yourselves here. Absolutely jaw-droppingly, humblingly, mind-blowingly, paradigm-shiftingly, hair-raisingly, life-enhancingly spell-binding.
Please, please, please invest 7'51" of your lives to watch this.
PS Can anybody make out the 'preferred beverage' Gould takes a slug of before attacking the ivories?