Glenn Gould's Hand

Just looking at his hands, his technique is among the most skeletal and effective. But some how his upper arms take some potent source of energy from him. Those kind of power is less important in pieces like Bach's, however, so they still sound flawless. I am betting if he has to play some Rachmaninov he would run into some technical limitations. His Ravel, for example, are not as convincing as his Bach. It doesn't sound as colorful as his Bach! While it's still wonderful, I think he can orchestrate even more if he can be more fluid and skeletal in his upper arm. (and I bet in his mind he wants to) From 4:50 onward, this limitation becomes quite obvious Notice also how he stiffened his right hand around 6:13. That would have been a thrilling high point for the piece!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGO0wbRdI4Y&feature=fvw Just looking at his hands, his technique is among the most skeletal and effective. But some how his upper arms take some potent source of energy from him. Those kind of power is less important in pieces like Bach's, however, so they still sound flawless. I am betting if he has to play some Rachmaninov he would run into some technical limitations. His Ravel, for example, are not as convincing as his Bach. It doesn't sound as colorful as his Bach! While it's still wonderful, I think he can orchestrate even more if he can be more fluid and skeletal in his upper arm. (and I bet in his mind he wants to) From 4:50 onward, this limitation becomes quite obvious ! Quite honestly, I'm not sure he wanted to. I think he preferred that dry sound. With his technique, I think he sat so low that he had no choice but to hold back his arms to the point of excess. If he released his arm into the state of a hanging chain, his wrist would have been very low compared to the keys, even if his whole forearm were aligned into a straight line. While this could actually make for a big sound on white keys, the problem is that sometimes he wouldn't be able to reach the black keys at all He had to "hold" his wrist and arms up constantly against gravity and use a lot of effort in the shoulders, to be able to access the keyboard properly. I'm not sure his fingers could have born such weight for any long period, had he simply released. Horowitz found a balance where he could truly release his wrist and elbow whenever he wanted for as long as he wanted- but Gould never seems able to release anything on a long-term basis. I think it explains his need to flail around so often. If he was still, the effort probably would have been crippling. Despite the fact he had to hold back so much of his arm's weight, I think the position makes so much weight available to start with that he could still play fine for rapid fingerwork, without losing stability. However, I think he resorted to pushing far too much when he tried to play louder. You do see a number of very good movements in the film where his hand activates and the arm releases to correspond (leading to a miniscule, balanced movement, with an aligned wrist). These are very similar to the Horowitz motions. However, I think he thrusts forward rather too often.

Very perceptive and accurate comments, Alvin. I quite agree. Why did he do it? It worked for him, and I think it did because it gave him exceptional physical closeness to the key and thus the capacity to control his articulations with exceptional precision. It's kind of amazing to see the shoulders pulling back so often. Again this probably worked to his advantage in Bach, drying out the sound by thinning it. More arm would make things too juicy. Which is why the Ravel comes across as "Baroque Ravel." It would be nice to hear Gould's Tombeau de Couperin where that Baroque sound might work very nicely. I wonder if it exists... AFF