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"Godowsky IS the test of time"

Posted by Chris from Lafayette (A) on April 4, 2014 at 15:54:22

In Reply to: In a hundred years, will people know Jon's name? posted by tinear on April 4, 2014 at 08:25:50:

OK - but there's a lot left unsaid in that assertion.

Certainly, no one would rationally deny that LG must have been one of his era's greatest pianists, based on both contemporaneous accounts of his playing and his psychedelically elaborate piano compositions and transcriptions. Judged only by his recordings however, the picture is far less clear. There are accounts that he used to freeze up in the recording studio and that he was so unhappy with some of these studio efforts that he actually begged his friends NOT to listen to his recordings.

I don't always agree with Jed Distler on Classics Today, but he is a legitimate and knowledgeable critic. Looking at Distler's reviews of the complete Godowsky recordings as they've come out on the Marston label, we can see that they're all over the place, going from a 5/10 to a 9/10, and laced with phrases such as "pedestrian, rhythmically stiff results", "clunky", "impossibly square", "wooden", "perfunctory", "rhythmic lurchings" - you get the idea. OTOH, Distler rightly draws attention to the pianist's gorgeous voicings and tonal balances in some pieces (to the extent we can hear such qualities in these ancient recordings). The point is that Godowsky's playing as heard via recordings is very much a mixed bag.

At one point, I did own a large selection of Godowsky recordings (I believe on the apr label), but to be honest, I don't remember the Carnaval performance at all. (I do get annoyed sometimes about sub-par sound quality.)

But to be fair, I wouldn't push a hyperbolic assertion like "Godowsky IS the test of time", especially in view of the mixed results he attained in the recording studio.

Edits: 04/04/14

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