Too Much Music

I had too much new music yesterday. I received the set of Glenn Gould playing Bach's English Suites and  French Suites which contains 4 cd's, and I also decided to buy the high definition download of Martin Frost playing Mozart. I didn't previously have any clarinet music, and was enamored of this disc after viewing the promo video on the eClassical web site.

The video is well done, the playing is beautiful and it's Mozart pieces I mostly hadn't heard before. 

I really like high def downloads because they sound so good! This was was not exception; the playing is terrific too.

The Gould Bach takes a little getting used to. You have to be in the mood for Bach, and for me that's usually early in the morning. Late in the day, which is when I installed these discs into iTunes, it's more of a musical stretch. But I labored with it. And I had to labor with iTunes too because it put the 4 discs into a set of two, doubling up the track numbers for each disc. It took me a good 15 minutes to manually straighten everything out so it shows up as 4 discs with the proper tracks in each disc. 

The Gould recordings are also old. The sound is not up to today's standards. I turned down the treble a bit because the piano hurt my ears. Still, I'm sure it will grow on me. I have to admit that one of my most favorite sets I own is Glenn Gould playing the Mozart piano sonatas. I spent a year listening to it on Classical Archives before getting a cd copy. I still listen and it's still a treat. He's so original and precise and outrageous in his playing. It's inspiring, he's fearless.

I watched the documentary "Genius Within" about Glenn Gould on Netflix a few years ago. It really shows you what his life was like. Very well done.

I backed up up my computer yesterday, because I've been adding so much music lately I was getting nervous about losing something. That's the downside of using computers to play music. Still I think the benefits outweigh.

This morning's breakfast concert included more Bach English Suites by Gould, and Dvorak's String Quartet No. 12 in F Major "American" Op. 96. This is a high def file and sounds it.