Glenn Gould Wittmayer harpsichord
Released 1973 by CBS 73 076 (first release 1972 Columbia Masterworks M 31512 in the US)
Engineers John Johnson, Kent Warden (not mentioned in the documentation)
Producer Andrew Kazdin (not mentioned in the documentation)
Liner notes by Dr. Otto Riemer

Seite 1
Suite Nr. 1 A-dur
00:00 Präludium 2’17
02:19 Allemande 3’04
05:24 Courante 2’19
07:44 Gigue 2’02

Suite Nr. 2 F-dur
09:53 Adagio 2’29
12:22 Allegro 1’27
13:50 Adagio 1’58
15:48 Fuge 1’56

Seite 2
Suite Nr. 3 D-moll
17:55 Präludium 0’59
18:55 Fuge 1’55
20:50 Allemande 2’31
23:23 Courante 1’56
25:19 Air, Variationen und Presto 9’31

Suite Nr. 4 E-moll
34:58 Fuge 2’50
37:50 Allemande 1’13
39:02 Courante 1’17
40:20 Sarabande 2’48
43:08 Gigue 1’02

Bradley Lehman wrote about the Händel suites by Glenn Gould
in the mailing list devoted to the discussion of Glenn Gould’s work and life in July 2000:
I said that the bizarre interpretation of the prelude of the Handel A major suite, with the hands totally disjointed from one another, sounds perhaps Slaughterhouse-Five-ish. That has nothing to do with registration (the choice of the “rubbery” buff stop or not). It just sounds like experimentation, or maybe an outright prank. Handel didn’t specify how the rhythm should go, so GG gave us two amorphous parts crossing back and forth over one another, aimlessly. Very odd.
I also said that I thought GG was riding along with the 1960’s/early 70’s pop fad of using harpsichord as a novelty sound. The buff stop sounds fun and exotic, it commands attention (at least for the first minute of its use), so there it is. I suspect that some of the reason GG used it so much was that it sounds different from everybody else. In Columbia’s own stables, the organist E Power Biggs was doing his own series of Bach, Joplin, Tchaikovsky, etc. on the pedal harpsichord as a fresh sound, and the young Anthony Newman was also doing harpsichord and organ recordings every bit as idiosyncratic as GG’s work. The more established harpsichordist Igor Kipnis was recording for Columbia’s daughter label, Epic. And Switched-On Bach was all the rage, and GG its biggest fan: the wilder the tone colors, the better. This Handel album is to me a child of its time, GG having a go on the coattails of Columbia’s other harpsichord projects, not to mention the popularity of harpsichord in studio work in pop music. Cash in!
More on that Wittmayer: it is one of those modern “concert” instruments resembling no particular historical style. It was a machine-produced instrument, not hand-crafted. The basic 8-foot sound is bland and even (rather than having much variety of tone color from octave to octave), and so the variety comes from adding and subtracting the special effects. Buff stops, a 4-foot stop (plays an octave higher), and a 16-foot stop (plays an
octave lower). On this type of instrument, the action and voicing are such that the player’s release of the key is not a very significant event; that is, the action doesn’t allow much expression in this area, especially when the buff stops are on. This is like giving a speech where none of the words are allowed to end in consonants, only vowels. Furthermore, on the evidence of this recording, the bass of this Wittmayer is woefully inadequate. It’s just a muddy mess of dull thuds down there, probably due to the fact that the soundboard is not doing much. The note in the CD booklet is telling: GG reported that this harpsichord was about 5 to 6 feet long. That’s barely long enough for an adequate set of strings
at concert pitch (“8-foot”). Strike one. Then a 16-foot set is added to that; physically they should be twice as long to play an octave lower, but they obviously can’t be in such a short case, so instead they’re made thicker and flabbier. That’s strike two. Then a 4-foot set is added, anchored into the soundboard since those strings are only half as long as the 8-foot set. The presence of a 4-foot stop once again reduces the overall basic resonance of the instrument, since the soundboard is now carrying that hitchpin rail and therefore has more mass and less resilience. Strike three. To support all these competing tensions, the case is made of heavy wood and therefore doesn’t resonate much itself. Strike four. The foreshortened 16-foot strings are so thick that plastic plectra won’t work on them; the only option is thick stiff leather plectra there, and those make a bluh-bluh-bluh dull pluck instead of anything crisp. Strike five (not that the 16′ is contributing much anyway). Result of all these strikes: a weak and muddy sound with no
projection. To make up for that basic inadequacy, the builder puts on a couple of buff stop mechanisms to give added variety. Whoo-hoo, more choices, all of them tonally lousy!