From Tatonik@21:1/5 to All on Sun Oct 23 01:39:00 2022
I'm not sure Gould has contempt for his audience, as I think Seymour
suggested at one point, but it's hard not to be left with the impression
that Gould has a certain contempt for Mozart. There's a distinction to
be made between Gould's Mozart and Gould's Brahms that I don't think was touched on in the videos. The performances of each composer may be
equally wrongheaded, yet I can't help coming away with the feeling that
Gould responds to Brahms in a way he is completely unable to with
Mozart. Nevertheless, if I were on a desert island and Gould's Op. 117
were the only one available to me, I might well decide to hang myself
from the nearest coconut tree. And it's not easy to hang yourself from
a coconut tree, believe me.
In the first half of the interview, in which there was a clip of Gould demonstrating two ways to play a Mozart theme, the Webern way and the traditional way, it struck me that both interpretations were equally off-putting.