The Gould/Forrester Urlicht performance was given at the 1957 Stratford (Ontario) Music Festival, and was released on Sony laser disc SLV 48 401 in 1992. The other movements of the symphony were not performed. During the previous summer at that same festival Gould conducted Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon. Throughout much of his career he fancied becoming a conductor and had plans near the end of his life to give up the piano entirely for a conducting career. In his very last recording (July/September 1982), he conducted an extremely slow performance of the original version of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, now available on Sony SK 46279.
Gould was quite a Mahler enthusiast and said at one point (in his calculatedly provocative style) that he felt Mahler was at his best when dealing with the contrapuntal intricacies of things like the Eighth Symphony, and at his worst when setting Chinese poetry.
James
Topic: "Urlicht w/ M. Forrester/N.Y. Phil./Glenn Gould, cond. (for TV?) (Read 7056 times)