JGV
483
Glenn Gould without the humming...
I posted this first on the Belles Lettres forum, because I thought that was more appropriate. Unfortunately that forum is rather slow nowadays. Furthermore there must be some readers here that appreciate the synergy of a famous baroque composer, an infamous performer and cutting-edge soft- and hardware technology.
Hi all,
One of the most popular classical recordings of all time, Glenn Gould's
1955 interpretation of Bach's Goldberg Variations has been
re-perfomerd. By whom you might ask. Well by a computer...
To quote the booklet of the CD:
"The hardware is a nine-foot Yahama Disklavier Pro grand piano, which,
drawing on high-definition MIDI files, can reproduce a digitally
encoded performance with eight times the precision of the ordinary
Disklavier marketed for home use. The software is a ground-breaking
process developed by Zenph Studios (...) Their process analyzes a
recorded piano performance and seperates its musical attributes (pitch
and duration of notes, velocity of key strikes, and so on) from the
surrounding noise, then encodes those attributes digitally to allow the
performance to be replayed on a high-resolution computer-controlled
piano like the pro."
So how does it sound? For my untrained ears it sounds very good. As the
booklet says the original album was trapped in the sound-world of the
1950s, in other words it was a simple mono recording. The re-recording
sounds a bit more 'fresh', with more pronouced dynamics here and there.
Most notably though you don't hear Gould tapping with his feet (at
least that is what I think I hear on the original) nor his famous
humming (which to some probably isn't a benefit of the re-recording)
Again according to the booklet the re-recording deeply impressed some
of Gould's friends and collegues. On Amazon I read a review where the
author stated the recording lacked soul. This is an interesting
observation. Perhaps the CD version lacks soul compared to the original
vinyl version. I cannot judge that, my 'orginal' version is a
remastered CD and I have experienced almost no classical musical, or
any music actually, on vinyl (I am from the CD generation). But the
question if it lacks soul can be a philosofical one. Perhaps a computer
can never reproduce the work of a genius like Gould? Perhaps there is
more to his playing than pitch and duration of notes, velocity of key
strikes, and so on?
I do think Glenn Gould would have liked the re-recording, at least the
idea behind it. He is known to have had an enormous interest in the
possibilties of recording in a studio.
There is one passage in the booklet that frightened me a bit. It says
that the company "envisions future applications including the creation
of 'templates of style' that would permit, say, a convincingly
'Gouldian' rendering of a piece Gould never actually played". I am not
sure if that would be a good development...
I do think that for every Gould, Goldberg or even Bach enthousiast this
is a must-have. It is very tantalizing to listen to a piece composed by
Bach in the 18th century, interpreted by Gould in the 50s and played by
a computerized grand piano. It is amazing on many levels.
Regards,
Joram
More on the company and techniques used, zenph.com m
For some samples you can look on amazon
