Search - Glenn Gould :: Gould: String Quartet No. 1

Gould's String Quartet...

Sébastien Melmoth | Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS | 09/27/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

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[Digitally Remastered Re-Issue of the Album Classic in a Deluxe, Miniaturized LP Sleeve Replica of the Original Vinyl Album Artwork. ]



Gould's String Quartet "Op. 1" (1955) is a rich essay in the vein of the twilight of late-Romanticism/early-Modernism.

It's a synthesis of late Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Mahler, Reger, Franck, and early Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern.

A substantial work, it runs about 36 mins. Here it is given an earnest reading by the first chairs of the Cleveland SO in 1960 under Gould's supervision.



GG's SQ is composed in the key of f minor--a somewhat unusual key sometimes explored by Mozart (Fantasy K.608) and Beethoven (Piano Sonata, Op.57; String Quartet Op.95). GG says of the key of f minor: "[it has] a certain obliqueness . . . halfway between complex and stable, between upright and lascivious, between gray and highly tinted."



Gould conceived of the piece as being very abstract--almost indifferent to the string quartet medium. He performed it himself on the piano.



The work has been both highly praised and harshly critizied. Gould himself was very self-effacing and almost sheepish in his reception of praise or condemnation of the piece, but ultimately he was quite satisfied with it, deigning not to revise it in later years.



It stands as a monument to his own personal ethos, and stands on its own as an unique work of art. Certainly is can be enjoyed by enthusiasts of Strauss' string works; Franck's SQ; Reger's SQs; Bruckner's Quintet; Schoenberg's 1st SQ; and Berg's SQ "Op. 3."

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