In the
April 8, 2013, issue of New Yorker, there was an essay by Jeremy Denk, a professional classical pianist, talking about his life in music.
One section of his essay led to an adventure for me. This was the section where Denk describes a concert he heard during his senior year at
Oberlin, by Hungarian pianist Gyorgy Sebok who was visiting from
Indiana University that night.
Sebok's encore was an "evanescent" rendition of the last movement or the Gigue (jig) of Bach's Partita No. 1. This is a two-minute baroque showpiece where one hand darts over the other, back and forth, over and over, and complex harmonies unwrap themselves up and down the keyboard. At the bottom of this essay, I have included a quote at length from Denk's essay on the Partita Gigue. (See also a 2022 interview with Denk where he recounts the Gigue story,
here.)
Intrigued, I looked up the
Partita No. 1, Gigue, on Youtube. There are countless renditions by pianists prominent and obscure. For a view of the handwork,
here. For Glenn Gould's too-rapid recording,
here.
Comparing different versions, I ran across one that was magically haunting by someone I'd never heard of, Dinu Lipatti. >>>That track of "Gigue" is: Here.
Dinu Lipatti - From YouTube Glimpse to Biography
Do find the
Dinu Lipatti Gigue as unforgettable as I do? Knowing nothing but this minute-long music clip, I was able to find out more.
Lipatti was a Romanian pianist whose rising career in the 1930s as a teen prodigy was cut off by the chaos of World War II. Lipatti ended up living in Geneva and teaching piano lessons into the 1940s. Immensely talented and
recovering his concert career, he gave a now-famous concert in Besancon, France, in September 1950, at its music festival. (Besancon is not far from Geneva).
Tragically, Lipatti was very ill with Hodgkin's disease, and died only 3 months later. That night in Besancon, he was so weak that he was unable to finish the last piece on his concert program. But the French radio ministry's recording of
The Besancon Concert became a musical legend.
For more on Lipatti,
- Wikipedia here.
- Dedicated website here.
- On the Besancon recording here.
- A review in The Guardian here.
Lipatti and Glenn Gould
Lipatti performed Bach on piano. I have read the story that at some point in the 1950s, someone dropped off a Lipatti album for a Columbia records executive in New York. The executive exclaimed, "We've got to contract this guy!" Too bad - Lipatti had died. Then someone said, "Hey, I've heard there's some guy, what's his name, young guy in Canada, also plays Bach on Piano." And that was Glenn Gould.
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Postscript
Denk's New Yorker Article (here)
Extract on hearing the author's hearing Sobek's version of Partita
One night in my senior year, I went to hear the Hungarian pianist György Sebők, who was visiting from Indiana University, where he taught. He was then in his late sixties—short and squat, almost triangular, and epically bald down the middle of his head. After a serious, hefty program, he offered an evanescent encore, the Gigue (or Jig) from Bach’s first Partita. The witty premise of the piece is hand-crossings: the right hand burbles away in the middle of the keyboard, filling in the harmony, while the left darts over and under it, picking out scraps of melody and bass line. Toward the end, Bach arrives emphatically on the bass note F. He is, in music-theory terms, just one step away from the home key—the imminent end of the piece is implied—but, instead of wrapping things up, he doubles the pace of hand-crossing and tightens the frame, so that the hands seem to whirl around each other. A clever paradox: though the piece is frozen in place, it seems to be moving faster than ever. As the hands whirl, the notes descend, and Bach visits every daring harmony he can, while sitting in the driveway mere moments from harmonic home. At last, in a flash, the piece resolves, and the left hand leaps up several octaves, like a slingshot or a skipping stone.
While performing this devilish sleight of hand, Sebők appeared angelic and unperturbed. The words “musical” and “unmusical” did not apply. It was as if the concepts behind the notes, playful and profound, had come alive. As he revealed each audacious but logical chord change, I experienced both shock and comprehension—surprise at something that made perfect sense. I can still see the last notes, his left arm gracefully crossing over his right, describing an arc to the final B-flat, his face conceding a small shadow of a smile. That moment felt like music escaping from the boring necessity of sound.
It determined the next five years of my life.
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Lipatti is buried in a small cemetery in Geneva. 1917-1950, age 33.
Films about Glenn Gould
I mentioned the anecdote, that Glenn Gould was supposedly discovered when a Columbia recording executive was looking for "the next Dinu Lipatti."
Although Gould seems part of our era and Dinu Lipatti part of the 1930s, Gould lived only about 30 years after Lipatti's death. Gould lived 1933-1983, dying of a stroke just after his 50th birthday. There are two very different but very good films about Gould. 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould is one of the most creative documents ever, in my book, and one of my favorite films. 1993. It's 32 short films (2-3 minutes), some talking heads, some Gould footage, some just music, bringing us a wonderful perspective on Gould's life. It's 93 minutes; rents on Amazon; you might find an uploaded copy on Youtube. The other, from 2009, is Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould. It's a more traditional documentary and includes a lot of footage of Gould himself, views of people who worked with him, and a fair bit about his relationships with women (one woman moved to Toronto to spend four years with him or near him). It streams on some less-common sites like Kanopy, and can be rented for $3 from YouTube but not Amazon or iTunes. You might also find an uploaded copy on YouTube. It's very good, but to me seemed far longer than 32 Short Films (it's 1h53m). Different as they are, both films leave the viewer with a strong and memorable impression of Gould's life and work.
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See a 1950s version of Gigue by Liberace at minute 16 here:
