Search - Glenn Gould, Kitchener-Waterloo United Mennonite Church Congregational Choir :: Glenn Gould's Solitude Trilogy: Three Sound Documentaries

Unlike Anything Else You Own

R. Williams | Austin, Texas USA | 10/14/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Between 1967 and 1977 a frighteningly gifted concert pianist focused his formidable energies on creating a symphony of sound using no instruments beyond an odd cacophony of unrehearsed and unscripted human voices. I know of no other recordings like these three journeys.If you listen with your analytical left brain to the ebb and flow of the overlapping, recorded interviews of Gould's carefully chosen cast of characters, you will become profoundly frustrated, irritated and confused. In passages, the voices are mixed so equally as to become equally unintelligible. At other times, the background noises are a bit too loud for us to clearly discern the precise content of what is being said. But the mood. Ah, the mood. If you will but listen with your artistic right brain and simply let the sound of it wash over you without trying to determine what it "means," you will gain deep and profound insight from each of these 3, 1-hour masterpieces that will stay with you for life. And each time you listen, you "get it" better and deeper than the time before. These works are neither documentary nor commentary in any traditional sense, but a strikingly human conveyance of time and place. You can only hate them or love them.I dearly love them, and believe that you will, too."

One of the century's greatest.. composers?

joseph k kudirka | chicago | 08/24/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"this cd set is made up of three radio "documentaries" made by gould after he'd given up piano performance, ostensibly to pursue a career as a composer. while works such as his early string quartet are quite good, this is gould's real compositional output. critiqued as pieces of music, these could be called "sound collage", but a think a musical comparison that would give one a better sense as to where these could be placed are the operas of robert ashley. why? the original recordings are of speech, though there is no libreto -- all text is culled from interviews, collaged with other sounds, from ocean waves to janis joplin. the best of the three is probably, "the idea of north", which is glimpsed in "32 short films about glenn gould". if you liked that, get this!! -- one of the dearest recordings i own."