Linkshänder

I wasn't much attracted to multi-voiced things until I was a teenager. I was definitely homophonically inclined until the age of about ten, and then I suddently got the message. Bach began to emerge into my world then and has never altogether left it. It was one of the greatest moments of my life, hat Glenn Gould gesagt. Es wird manchmal vergessen, dass Glenn Gould Linkshänder war. Das gibt ihm eine größere Geläufigkeit in der linken Hand, deshalb kann er Bachs filigranes Rankenwerk für die linke Hand so akzentuieren, wie das kaum einer vor ihm getan hatte. Wahrscheinlich hat ihn deshalb Mozart wenig interessiert. Mozart is a right-handed composer, hat er gesagt, he literally does nothing with the left hand. Die Alberti Bässe Mozarts sind keine Herausforderung für Glenn Goulds linke Hand. Glenn Gould ist heute vor zweiunddreißig Jahren gestorben. Zwei Monate später ist auch Artur Rubinstein gestorben. Wie man auf dem Photo sehen kann, haben sich die beiden Pianisten einmal getroffen.

Eigentlich wollte Glenn Gould den älteren Kollegen für die Zeitschrift Look interviewen, aber der drehte bei der ganzen Fragerei irgendwann den Spieß um und befragte den Jüngeren: Suddenly you just abandoned the field... It was very strange, and I've thought a lot about it, because it is a great loss... There was never a moment when you felt that very special emanation from an audience? GG: There really wasn't.... AR: But you never felt you had the souls of those people? GG: I didn't really want their souls, you know....I certainly wasn't stimulated by their presence as such. AR: There we are, absolute opposites, you know! Wenn man das Publikum nicht braucht, dann kann man auch im Studio spielen. Nur für sich. Und für die Ewigkeit. Dank ihm kreist Johann Sebastian Bach im Weltraum. I didn't really want their souls, you know. Wenn er nur wüsste. Unsere Seelen hat Glenn noch immer.

Ich habe für den heutigen Tag ein Gedicht von dem amerikanischen Dichter Stanley Plumly, es heißt schlicht und einfach Glenn Gould:

I heard him that one night in Cincinnati.
The concert hall, 1960, the same day
Kennedy flew into town in perfect sunlight
and rode the route that took him
through the crowds of voters and nonvoters
who alike seemed to want to climb
into the armored convertible.
Gould did not so much play as address
the piano from a height of inches,
as if he were trying to slow the music
by holding each note separately.
Later he would say he was tired
of making public appearances,
the repetition of performing the Variations
was killing him. But that night
Bach felt like a discovery, whose repetitions
Gould had practiced in such privacy
as to bring them into being for the first time.
This was the fall, October, when Ohio,
like almost every other part of the country,
is beginning to be mortally beautiful,
the great old hardwoods letting go
their various scarlet, yellow,
and leopard-spotted leaves one by one.

Lesen Sie auch: ➱Glenn Gould, ➱Gouldberg Variations, ➱Play Bach, ➱Klavierkonzert, ➱Fräcke, ➱Haydn: Klaviersonaten und ➱Mozarts Klaviersonaten.