Glenn Gould "The Alchemist" DVD Movie Review

[Mark Heide]

This is one of the most facinating films that I have viewed recently. You will not be able to rent it, but it is available for purchase at $19.99 (If you want to buy a copy, just send me an e-mail and I'll tell you the cheapest places to get it from).

This is a four part film about concert pianist Glenn Gould. It features performances and interviews. It was filmed in 1974 ten years after he retired from the concert platform at the age of 32!

Part one of the film is called "The Retreat" which is a combination of performance and interview. In the interview he states his reasons for quiting public performance. Glenn actually perfers his audience to listen to his records rather than go to a live performance which leads us to part two of the film, "The Alchemist."

Part two is about how Glenn concieves ideas for recording and demonstrates this process. He believes that recording is the same process as editing a film. I believe that anyone that is interested in sound or film editing will enjoy this segment immensely.

Part three is "Glenn Gould 1974". This segment is about music and its composers and how Glenn interprets them, including himself.

Part four is a complete performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 6 in E minor.

The DVD allows you to select a performance only version of the music that is featured in the film. The film is a little over two and half hours long (note that the case the DVD came in states the film is B/W but it is really all in color, and includes a short bonus film that is in B/W from 1950.

What I found facinating is the filming of the performances represents how I would expect performances to be filmed today, and find it surprising that it was done in this fashion. The producer of the film appears to have been influenced by Clouzot's filming of Herbert von Karajan. In particular the performances were filmed in a music video type of production featuring extreme closeups of the hands from various angles and Glenn's facial expressions (Glenn also hummed while he played).

The booklet with the DVD has an essay by Bruno Monsaingeon who made the film. He had no films to his credit and decided to write to Glenn Gould c/o CBS Records that he wanted to make a film about music. Six months later he received a twenty page letter from Glenn.

Reality is stranger than fiction.

Mark

[andyfox]

An interesteing man. I remember seeing (I think it was called) "32 short films about Glenn Gould" and enjoying it. Gould's recording of the esoteric Bach "Goldberg Variations" was, surprisingly, the #1 classical recording the year it came out (1956) and is sastonishing.

I can play, sort of, Bach's Italian Concerto. I thought I was doing it pretty well until I heard Gould's recording of it. Yikes!

I think there are several biographies of Gould available. I like Otto Friedrich's. Timp Page's "The Glenn Gould Reader" is great fun. Gould liked to be shocking (claiming, for example, that Mozart was an incompetent).

I'll pick up the CD, thanks for the review.

[Mark Heide]

andyfox,

I had watched the 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. It's kind of a mixture of fact and fiction. The fact comes from the actual real interviews and the fiction is the actor that portrays Glenn Gould. The acting was pretty close representation of Glenn Gould.

I like "The Alchemist" for the reason that it is the REAL Glenn Gould. He was a person that enjoyed technology and made a prediction that the concert hall would be replaced by films and records.

I have some old Columbia records of Gould. The back of the jackets have essays by Glenn and they are hilarious.

Mark