Glenn Gould - "Glenn Gould Plays His Own Transcriptions of Wagner Orchestral Showpieces" Vinyl, LP, Album, 1973 (Columbia Masterworks)

Glenn Gould playing Richard Wagner is a strange and even an exotic cocktail.   Wagner is very much the heavy metal of the 19th-century composers, and one who doesn't shy from over-kill or over-reaching the borders of opera, stage, and ego.   Gould is a musician who I often think of as a magician who can find the most profound nuances in a composer's work.   Gould took the huge orchestration of Wagner's music and re-arranged the works for solo piano.  Here, Gould is like a surgeon dissecting a piece of music in a laboratory of his own design. 

I love Wagner for his melodies and extreme romanticism, but hate everything else that goes with his image/work - racism being one thing that bugs me.  Uri Caine is the other musician that stripped away Wagner from his culture, and fine-tuned his melodies as a cafe band.   But Gould was there first with his down-to-earth ability to strip Wagner as well, of all of his jewels and ambition, and makes a point that the composer was a great melodist. 

When I hear Gould's Wagner album, I'm not really hearing the composer, but the chef that's making the ultimate dish from the genius pianist.  Like Thelonious Monk who plays around the melody, or sketches as if he's using a fine ink brush, Gould works in a similar method in tracing out the Wagner melodies into a new work. 

Gould's version of Wagner is not to replace the epic orchestrations, but just add a footnote or an endnote to work that is often not torn apart in such a fashion, like Gould and Caine's playful approach to Wagner.   One of my favorite classical albums, that for me, is a totally new entrance into Wagner's music. 

Glenn Gould - "Plays His Own Transcriptions of Wagner Orchestral Showpieces" Vinyl, LP, Album, 1973 (Columbia Masterworks)

I don't know what is more fascinating, Glenn Gould making an arrangement of Wagner's music for the piano, or that he mentions Ferrante and Teicher in the interview that comes with the album.  Still, Wagner has always been a favorite of mine, but to a point.  My problem is that I feel that Wagner's music gets lost in the orchestration, and through his iconic ego.   The beautiful melodies that he wrote are superb, yet they get lost in the Wagner world or mix. 

Glenn Gould transcribed the orchestration to piano music, and doing so, brings Wagner back to planet Earth, where us other humans live as well.   Wagner is very much a genius from the 19th century, and Gould is a brilliant contemporary artist.  The two (well, Wagner's music) meet in a recording studio in 1973, and it's hearing these beautiful melodies in a fresh and new way.  I suspect the actual Viking Wagner lunatic will probably hate this album, but for me, it's a masterpiece. 

Gould keeps the romantic feelings intact, but it's on a smaller scale.  Reading his interview that comes with this vinyl disc, it's interesting that he points out that Liszt, a masterful pianist, did transcriptions of Beethoven's orchestrational music.  Besides the aesthetic flavor of doing something, it is also a proper technique in presenting a composer's music to places that couldn't afford a full orchestra.  Gould's purpose is to re-think Wagner, and I think he also wanted to dominate the music, instead of the music dominating him.  

As far as I know, Gould played and recorded Liszt's transcripts of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, but the Wagner piece is the only one that he actually wrote an arrangement for piano.  There are three pieces by Wagner on the album:  "Meistersinger Prelude," Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey from "Götterdämmerung," and on side two "Siegfried Idyll." The Gould pace is slow on "Siegfried Idyll."  It's a thoughtful approach to this music, with pauses, almost if someone is meditating on what is being played, as he works through the piece.  A beautiful method with respect to performing Wagner. 

Richard Wagner/George Szell, The Cleveland Orchestra - "Wagner Showpieces" Vinyl, Album, 1967 (Columbia Masterworks)

Unfiltered and pure Richard Wagner.   In no fashion in my life at this moment can I sit down or watch an entire Wagner opera.  One, I could care less for him, but on the other hand, I'm in love with "Prelude and Love-Death from Tristan and Isolde."  The intensity builds, releases a bit and builds again.  It never let's go and it's like standing on the ledge of a building and thinking about jumping.  But you don't!   "Tannhäuser Overture" and "Die Meistersinger Prelude" are just perfect melodic pieces of clouds floating over one's soul and ears.  

I bought this album for a dollar and to me, it's worth seven times that amount.  I even like the album cover.  The lightning over nature, just about to give the landscape hell.  Wagner is all about mood, and the overtures and preludes are just enough Wagner for me. I don't need anymore.  I also love Uri Caine's small combo versions of Wagner's set pieces as well.   That and this album is all the Wagner I need.  

Uri Caine Ensemble - "Wagner E Venezia" CD Album, Germany, 1997 (Winter & Winter)

The great Richard Wagner melodies played by a six-member band, live, in what sounds like a cafe in Venice Italy.  Uri Cane is a composer, and a jazz and classical pianist.  He has done a similar treatment to Mozart's music, but for me, Wagner is the key ingredient for this type of cultural mash-up.    What Caine did was bring Wagner back to earth, not as this insane over-the-top composer, but as a classical composer who wrote these tender sweet incredible melodies.   So in other words, Wagner stripped down.   The theater is gone, the Norse gods are zipped, and what we have here is cafe music played in front of what sounds like an audience in some outside cafe.  

It's a peculiar choice to present Wagner's music in this light, but one that is highly effective and what's more important strips the image off (at least for this recording and band) to appreciate the Wagner experience without the dramatics.  The ensemble besides Caine on piano, is two violins, an accordion, stand-up bass player, and Violoncello.  By far my favorite Wagner recording of all time. And beautifully designed package as well.