Release Date: 01 April 2018
Label: Dorian / Sono Luminus
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 053479222022
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: For Glenn Gould
Description
It was the year Glenn Gould died when I first heard his legendary name. It was his Bach that introduced me to his playing. His sound struck me immediately...a sound that was compelling and uncompromising. It was not designed to speak words of mere prettiness, but of an individual truth. Was Gould cerebral or emotional? One heard in his interpretations a mind passionately fierce in its convictions. His concert programs were striking. To the concertgoer used to seeing a program of Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt, Gould’s programs of Gibbons, Sweelinck, Bach, Webern, and Berg must have seemed daunting on paper. I had the great honour of performing that exact program, the same program with which Gould presented his US debut at the Phillips Collection, and his debut at the Ladies Morning Music Club in Montreal. Never before had a concert program made so much sense to me. I hope the audience would say the same...I know my spirits were lifted playing this program. Orlando Gibbons and Jan Sweelinck were composers I knew from singing their motets at a choir school I attended in downtown Toronto. I had no idea until I started learning Gould’s program that these two composers had works for solo keyboard! Their harmonies, melodic structure, and ornamentation were just how I remembered them back in the choir school days. Bach’s Sinfonias also brought me back to my childhood, when I would sing the middle line in each three-part invention, while playing the other two voices on the piano. The 5th Partita took me back to a dance class I took in school, learning the steps to an Allemande, Courante, and Sarabande. Alban Berg was introduced to me by way of Wozzeck, and ever since, I have always felt the composer as operatic. Berg’s Piano Sonata, to me, was as potent as Isolde’s Liebestod. My favourite recording of Glenn Gould is his album of Brahms’ Intermezzi. I felt, through that recording, that I got closer to understanding who Gould was as an artist. In the composers discussed before, I heard Gould the passionate theorist, dancer, and singer. In Brahms, I finally heard Gould, the salon artist, the homebody cozying up in his summer home in Lake Simcoe. My decision to record Glenn Gould’s program came right after performing it in Montreal. While paying homage to one of the great Canadian legends, I was being transported to childhood memories of growing up in Toronto, Gould’s home town, studying at the Royal Conservatory, Gould’s home alma mater, and being an artist from Canada, Gould’s country. Stewart Goodyear is an accomplished pianist as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, recitalist and composer. Mr. Goodyear has performed with major orchestras of the world including the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Bournemouth Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, MDR Symphony Orchestra (Leipzig), Montreal Symphony, To
Tracklisting
Rachel Yonan; Kwan Yi
Various
Tilney, Colin
Smithson Quartet
Robin Bullock, Ken Koldner, La
Musica Pacifica
Melia Watras
Julianne Baird & Philome, Baro
Stewart Goodyear
Stewart Goodyear
