Boy, am I tired. I am looking forward to sleep and rest and will now just need to head home for just that. I might need to stop for a little bite, but it will be a tiny one, as I do not want to spend the night jumping from drama dream to drama dream. There will probably be music in my head though. Very likely Johann Sebastian Bach's French Suites. In order to make myself stay awake I gave my ears some of that good and wonderful and great. Listened to my tiny Glenn Gould collection on my iTunes. And then I decided to go out there and get more of the humming brilliant goodness. One tiny invigorating piece I must have found in the days of wild scavenges across the folders of friends who knew more about good music than me turned out to be a file called French Suite 5 - 26 - Allemande - gould... The mp3 was a fragment, not even the whole thing. But it was so beautiful. So I decided to quickly get it, and maybe more?... Turns out iTunes store does not have the Gould version of the piece. They have it by Andrei Gavrilov, but, please may he forgive me, his version sounds as if he were driving a monster truck through a muddy field, compared to the crisp and exciting Gould interpretation.
The Gavrilov pieces were also part of some sort of compilation called Double Forte - Bach: Keyboard Concertos & French Suite No.5. (Over here, over here, see the five legged man!) Hmm... this was not what I was looking for.
And then I found "Virgin Veritas - Bach French Suites" played by Davitt Moroney. Hmm, a real bargain so to speak, the whole 52 pieces for the price of an iTunes album ($9.99). This was not Glenn Gould playing, but Davitt Moroney appears to be quite an expert on Bach, oh, and did I mention that he plays hapsicord? (Not one like this, but more one like one of these.
So why not listen to Bach the way he most likely performed the music himself?
... Oh, it is quite an experience... I went from being able to listen to a finely adjusted soft sound of a fragment of a piece played my one of my favorite humans to ever touch a piano, to owning two hours, twenty three minutes and forty one seconds of Bach performed on an instrument that does not do so well when it comes to fine volume adjustments. The music is beautiful, the recording is very charming. (Birds from the garden reply to the music whenever the hapsicord it gives them the sest chance.) But the Bach on a Hapsicord for more than two hours makes me want to go out and scratch some glass for relaxation.
The expression wired is much older than the internet, believe me...
Moroney an Bach are touching nerves in me I never thought existed.
My hands are sweaty, my breath is short, I am sitting so upright in my chair, if i sat more upright I would be standing on my big toes. I am basically bright eyed and definitely bushy tailed, claws out, ready to jump.
My conclusion... I am going to fall in love with this recording... just give me some time and something to squeeze.
How do I link to the iTunes Store?, so you can listen to some snippets at least?
"...finely adjusted soft sound of a fragment of a piece played my one of my favorite humans to ever touch a piano..."
Indeed. I will take Glenn Gould's Bach performances over anyone else's any day of the week. And as much as I want to like the harpsichord (being a lover of underdog instruments and animals), I just don't.
: D
"And as much as I want to like the harpsichord (being a lover of underdog instruments and animals), I just don't."
: D
right on...
(I just put my headphones on again, to give it yet another try...brave me...)
O, do try Andras Schiff, too, for the French Suites. He plays a Bosendorfer piano....the underdog of pianos (cf. Steinway, Yamaha). His Bach is very spung.
Andras Schiff plays French Suite No. 5 – Gigue.
Also, the harpsichord works of Couperin and Rameau are quite recommended.