After a four-months academic job, I am returned to Hacker School for another season of programming ferment. So I find myself engaged in self-cultivation almost every minute until May. One is extremely busy, but there is also time and even need for certain kinds of repose. So let me report that in my musical life I've discovered Friedrich Gulda. I'd never heard him play before. I'm enormously satisfied with the clear and eloquent recitations of the Hammerklavier Sonata; three parts:
and the Diabelli Variations; six parts:
- Waltz and Variations 1-8;
- Variations 9-15;
- Variations 16-24;
- Variations 25-28;
- Variations 29-31;
- Fugue and Variation 32;
The fughetta of the Diabelli Variations he plays very fast, as does Maria Yudina. While on an academic gig last Fall, I discussed this with a good friend, a real 知音 ('one who can hear my very thoughts in the music I play'), and he found it much too fast. He is a professional musician and knows his business — after all, every component of a fugue should be fully open and accessible to the hearer, which is easier when it's a bit languorous, right? But in the context of the preceding variation as Gulda enunciates it, I think his speed on the fughetta is ideal. You can hear the two — the aerobic #23 (it must be Beethoven's editorial on technical exercises for the fingers) followed by the placid fughetta #24, here. I think Gulda presents the right balance, although you can argue that a slower fughetta has its place, since Beethoven uses far more shocking contrasts elsewhere in this composition.
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