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Article: Truly, madly, deeply.(Wondrous strange: the life and art of Glenn Gould)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- June 14, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Wondrous strange: the life and art of Glenn Gould.
By Kevin Bazzana. Oxford. 528 pp. $35.
It's only a little fughetta in C minor, a piece J.S. Bach wrote into a notebook he was keeping for the purpose of teaching his eldest son. When Wanda Landowska played it, on one of the records with which she pioneered the twentieth-century revival of the harpsichord, she skipped through it in not much more than a minute, which seems about right. Here in this piano recording, though, it's twice as long, twice as slow. We hear every detail. The left hand starts, setting out the subject, which is hardly more than an up-down scale pattern until a tight little motif ...