One of Gould's "Clunkers"

ejgeiger

I really enjoy Gould's recordings of both books of the Well Tempered Clavier, so I thought I'd give these recordings a shot, as I'm a piano student interested in taking on some of these pieces myself. Gould really misses the mark on these recordings, treating them as mere student exercises, taking them at exceedingly fast tempos without much thought as to mood or inflection. As always, he avoids most of the ornamentations, which in simpler works as these can add quite a bit of expression to the music. His piano is one of the worst aspects of these recordings. His action is set with the let-off too high, and one constantly hears the hammers rebounding off the strings, making this set all the more frustrating to listen too. I'd rate this one down there with the execrable recordings he did years later on the Wittmayer harpsichord, where you continuously hear the jacks slamming into the jackrail. Columbia obviously wasn't picky when it came to releasing material by Gould, as evident here.