
The Open Goldberg Variations - voodoochilo
http://www.opengoldbergvariations.org/
======
madhadron
This is an excellent recording. The voicing is very clear, the touch light,
and the phrasing clear. My gripes are tiny, things like in variation 13, I'd
love to hear a little more leading through the phrase with the pedal, but
honestly, that would probably break something else in the phrasing. I'm a
violinist, not a pianist, so I don't know the Goldberg inside and out the way
I do the Sonatas and Partitas.

However, I'm confused why Gould came up at all, since his recordings of Bach
are lousy. His tempos are often so bizarrely fast or slow that the music is
lost (particularly in the two and three part inventions). His voicing ranges
from pedestrian to wrong. As for his messing with tuning and his piano, he was
largely an eccentric crank who pretended that no one else was doing that, had
been doing that, and was doing a better job than him. Look at the Goldberg
recordings on harpsichord by Wanda Landowska (my favorite) and Anthony Newman
for much, much better renditions than Gould. As for greatest pianist of the
20th century, let's be honest: Rubinstein and Horowitz were both better
pianists and incomparably better musicians.

~~~
enneff
> I'm confused why Gould came up at all, since his recordings of Bach are
> lousy

You're not confused. You're just taking this opportunity to voice your
(minority) opinion on Gould. I _love_ his interpretation of Bach, and so do
many others. His Goldberg Variations are among the most popular classical
recordings. Of course his name is bound to come up.

As for "As for greatest pianist of the 20th century," why didn't you respond
directly to the (single) person making that claim?

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conanite
See also <http://musopen.org/> ... initally funded by kickstarter, they use
donations to produce pro recordings of classical music which are then released
to the public for free.

~~~
steve19
I donated to that through KickStarter. He recently emailed us to say that the
editing had been completed ...

> Good news. Editing is complete, we are now mixing the music and adding
> finishing touches. I am spending all of my time listening through everything
> very carefully. We are close enough that I'm going to be submitting an order
> for t-shirts this week, and begin preparing everyone's gifts.

> I will send an update before everything is mailed, in the meantime I am
> figuring out a way to get the original ProTool files online so donors can
> download them and mix things themselves

> Thanks for your patience and for sticking through this with me, hopefully
> you will all be as pleased as I am with the final result.

It has taken about 18 months since he KickStart funding was successful. I
think it was a lot more work than he anticipated.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/Musopen/record-and-
relea...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/Musopen/record-and-release-free-
music-without-copyrights)

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gtani
I would recommend the various accounts of Glenn Gould's GV recordings, his
Chickering and how it was voiced, as an example of the scope of the project.
Voicing a grand piano by itself is a serious undertaking (read about
inharmonicity and octave stretching). "Glenn Gould Reader" and "Romance on 3
legs" are good places to start.

re: microphone placement

<http://glenngould.org/f_minor/msg04070.html>

re: Simone Dinnerstein's GV

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/arts/music/28simo.html>

~~~
stan_rogers
Gould's home piano was a Chickering, but the GVs were played on Steinways in
both the '55 and '81 recordings. The "condemned" CD318 he preferred was very
like his Chickering, with a lot of lateral play. After it was fixed and
brought to spec, it was just another piano.

I would love to have had the tech available to have him record his '81
remotely. The rhythmic continuity may have given it a less-than-traditional
presentation, but I found the whole to make an engaging, coherent piece. But
there was no getting around his voice by that point. Perhaps there could be a
dynamically identical reperformance made some day (like the Zenph rendition of
the '55 with a good deal more accuracy). Until then, I can put up with the
sing-along, I guess. But I find I have trouble with traditional pacings now.

Both the DVD (in which the '81 is put together, largely in post) and the
interview in the combined box set are well worth a listen.

~~~
gtani
Thanks for the info. I made an acquaintance of a concert pianist maybe 8 years
ago, and started reading about Gould, different pianos. My friend has a mental
catalog of all the pianos she's performed on, the hall acoustics, and the
tuners (she told me there's a tuner around Santa Cruz, CA who's a magician).

Gould also purchased a Yamaha, i remember, I was surprised since it has a very
different action, starting with 10mm key dip (vs. 3/8" on most European
concert grands).

regarding singing: Keith Jarrett's older solo recordings feature humalongs,
along with moans and groans too. It would be a pity to avoid those 2 artists
because of that

~~~
stan_rogers
Except that Jarrett did not, himself, want to get rid of the vocalizations.
Gould _did_ , but found that they had become such an intrinsic part of his
learning of the piece that he was unable to play to his satisfaction without
vocalizing. (Note that he's doing a sort of meta-riff much of the time rather
than simply singing along with his playing. It bothered him that the non-
Bachness of his singing has to be recorded along with what Bach wrote.)

It's not that I avoid Gould (or suggest anyone else does)—in fact I've got his
entire Bach catalog and love it (Beethoven and Sibelius, not so much)—but one
of the immense pleasures of listening to Bach in any form, and particularly in
Gould's performances, is that one can listen to the whole of a piece _and_
follow the voices individually _at the same time_. (Or, I guess, you can sort
of Necker between the two if you can't quite hit the enlightenment listning.)
That was where Gould blew the "reference" Landowska out of the water in '55
(she played a much more "chorded" performance). Listened to at low volumes, I
can still do that with Gould's later recordings, but if the piece is played
loudly enough to make the piano's voicing and dynamics distinctive, then the
voice-over clouds the texture. I'd just love to hear it as Gould imagined it
rather than as it was captured, not as a replacement necessarily, but as a
companion.

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antiterra
I'm excited by the idea of a sizable library of works like this available to
the public. However, I noticed some high-pitched squeaking in the 128kbs MP3
and the Soundcloud widget; initially, I thought it was an encoding artifact.
After downloading the FLAC version, the chirps are even more pronounced,
suggesting they were present at recording, possibly some sort of mechanical
sound made from the piano. I find them really distracting, especially at the
beginning of track 5, "Variatio 4." It sounds like it's up there in the 10khz-
ish range. Anyone have any ideas on what it might be?

~~~
sp332
I can't hear it with my equipment, but it's definitely visible in the spectrum
around 14kHz.
[http://seanpalmer.smugmug.com/photos/i-4Z4GXQm/0/O/i-4Z4GXQm...](http://seanpalmer.smugmug.com/photos/i-4Z4GXQm/0/O/i-4Z4GXQm.png)
I tried isolating it. <http://soundcloud.com/sep332/isolated-artifacts-from-
kimiko>

~~~
antiterra
This was my attempt: <http://soundcloud.com/antiterra/variatio4squeaks>

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jwr
I expected something of low quality, but these are actually very good!
Impressive piece of work. Was this funded through kickstarter?

~~~
sasvari
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimiko_Ishizaka>

_She is part of the Open Goldberg Variations, a Kickstarter funded, and
Bösendorfer sponsored, team that recorded Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg
Variations and released the score and recordings into the public domain in
May, 2012._

~~~
worldimperator
The sound of the Bösendorfer is beautiful and really special, maybe they
should sponsor more like that. I'd love to listen to some 19th century stuff
on that piano, in particular.

Check out Friedrich Gulda's 'Mozart Tapes' for more of it.

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klipt
Would be neat if midi files were available too. (Not mechanical ones generated
from the score, but rather recorded via performance on a good digital piano by
a proficient pianist.)

~~~
thomasbonte
@klipt they are available, as the recording was made on a Bösendorfer with
CEUS technology: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/293573191/open-
goldberg-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/293573191/open-goldberg-
variations-setting-bach-free/posts/78977) The CEUS MIDI recording will be made
available in the near future. Follow @opengoldberg

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the_cat_kittles
since Gould is going to come up again and again, might I recommend checking
out his recordings of the french and english suites, and the art of the fugue,
all as good as the goldberg variations in my opinion!

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fluxon
To those interested in a MIDI file derived from the piano itself, there is
this, from <http://www.opengoldbergvariations.org/node/157>: "CEUS is a system
that allows suitably equipped pianos to faithfully record and reproduce real,
live performances by playing the recording back on the piano exactly as
played. Every detail, from the velocity of the key stroke to timing and
pedaling is reproduced as in the original performance. The CEUS recording of
the Goldberg Variations will also be released to the public domain." It might
not be too much of a stretch to devolve the CEUS data into MIDI.

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rdhyee
Besides the studio recording of the Goldberg Variations is the new score,
"engraved" in Musescore: <http://musescore.com/opengoldberg/goldberg-
variations> \-- "source code", if you will, that can be used. I'd love to see
work done on integrating the video display of the score with the actual
recording, using the "page turning recognition" technology shown in
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLYCWFboieM&feature=plcp](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLYCWFboieM&feature=plcp)

~~~
thomasbonte
@rdhyee we'll demonstrate the score following made by SampleSumo with the
MuseScore sheet music in 2 days in Munich at Classical:NEXT:
<http://www.classicalnext.com/program/showcases/showcases>

"In a special performance that marries the music of Bach and cutting edge
internet technology, internationally acclaimed pianist Kimiko Ishizaka will
perform Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Classsical:NEXT. Thanks to an audio
tracking technology developed by SampleSumo and a special new digital edition
of the Goldberg Variations score, the audience will be able to follow along
with the score as Ishizaka plays. The score, which was created using the open
source notation software MuseScore, as well as Ishizaka's recent recording of
the Variations, were crowdfunded by fans and released to the public domain as
a part of the Open Goldberg Variations project."

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kzahel
where's the torrent?

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voodoochilo
jsb simply rocks

