Glenn Gould - French Overture BWV 831 Live Broadcast

00:00 Overture
07:08 Courante
10:17 Gavotte I
11:17 Gavotte II
12:48 Passepied I
13:48 Passepied II
15:22 Sarabande
17:57 Bourrée I
18:57 Bourrée II
20:54 Gigue
23:43 Echo
Live broadcast at CBC Radio, Toronto March 13, 1969
Images from Devianart

From Booklet:

It is interesting to compare this performance of the Overture with the CBS recording that Gould made in 1971 and 1973 and released in 1974. While the two interpretations are broadly similar in terms of stylistic approach to Bach - this changed little throughtout Gould's career - there are important interpretative differences of both detail and structure. In some ways, the radio performace seems to have been a kind of rought draft for the recording Gould must have been contemplating making (Indeed, Gould often tried out pieces on radio or television before recording them).

In this performance of the opening movement in French Overture style, for example, Gould follows closely the rhythms and ornaments marked in the score, whereas in the commercial recording he takes mores rhythmic liberties, as much more creative with ornamentation. Here he observes no repeats in this movement; in the recording he repeats the opening section, switching to drier articulations that seem to imitate the lute or buff stop the harpsichord. The issue of repeats in Bach's music is one that Gould treated differently at different stages of his carrer. In his recording of the Overture, Gould plays the repeat of the first section in each of the eleven binary-form dance movements. In this performance, however, he plays both of the indicated repeats, except in the long opening and closing movements, and in the slow Sarabande. In his Bach recordings, Gould often repeats the first but never the second section in binary-form movements, except in the extemely short Little Preludes. (He seems to have have felt that in the final tonic cadence in Bach's dance movements has the same kind of finality and irrevocability that does at the close of the fugue, and that to repeat this cadence by repeating the second section is anticlimatic and even akward, uppseting internal harmonic proportins - an idea that can be defended in tonal and even dialiectical terms, thought it conflicts with traditional performance practice).

In general terms, this performance is more straightforward than a reading of the Overture, stayed closer to the print score. In the recorded version, Gould plays most of the movements more slowly (the quick Sarabande - played slowly and tenderly in the present perfrmance - being one major exception), and he seems to explore more seriously the emotional implications of Bach's B Minor. In the recordind he also takes greater advantages of the repeats to suggest alternative dynamics and articulations.

One interesting similarity between these performances of the Overture should be noted. In both Gould blantantly ignores the indicated alternations of piano and forte dynamics that are the raison d'etre of the last movement, entitled Echo. The pint of this movement is to translate into keyboard terms the texture of the Italian Concerto grosso, and therefore the dynamic contrasts, like the solo-tutti contrasts in the concerto grosso, are essential. But as early as his "rough draft" radio performance in 1969, Gould ignore Bach's obious intention. Why? Perhaps he throught he was saving Bach from some uncharacetristic extroversion. Gould had never much patience with Bach in his Italian Concerto mood; he prefers the less wordly, more abstract explorations of the fugal Bach. In the Echo movement, Gould seems determined to explore line and structure quite apart from the indicated surface character, and for this the listener is not likely to be grateful. A pity, since otherwise the performace on the disc is a sensitive and robust account of what is possibly Bach's greatest essay in French Suite form.