Released in early 2020, this album by the Acies Quartett became a strong candidate for oddball item of the year. It contains string quartets by Glenn Gould and Friedrich Gulda, each written in the early 1950s, just before the two emerged as pianistic celebrities. Neither was noted as a composer; in fact, Gould designated his String Quartet as his Op. 1, but never completed an Op. 2. Furthermore, the styles of the two pieces are not what you would expect. Gould was already a Bach performer, and he championed serialism to a ...
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Released in early 2020, this album by the Acies Quartett became a strong candidate for oddball item of the year. It contains string quartets by Glenn Gould and Friedrich Gulda, each written in the early 1950s, just before the two emerged as pianistic celebrities. Neither was noted as a composer; in fact, Gould designated his String Quartet as his Op. 1, but never completed an Op. 2. Furthermore, the styles of the two pieces are not what you would expect. Gould was already a Bach performer, and he championed serialism to a degree unusual in early 1950s North America. His String Quartet might be heard as drawing in a general way on these (it is relentlessly contrapuntal and rigorously structured), but in manner, it resembles no one so much as Beethoven, a composer Gould rarely played on the piano, and, it is widely thought, played poorly when he did. The opening movement, in particular, evokes that of the Beethoven String Quartet No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 131. It is more chromatic than Beethoven and...
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