Classical Music Ping List ping!
If anyone else has interesting articles about Glenn Gould and his 75th birthday, I’d be happy to ping them.
Fair warning - I’ll be out of the office pretty much after around 11:30 eastern time until tonight.
If you want on or off this list, let me know via FR e-mail.
Thanks,
sitetest
I bought one Glenn Gould CD. It was awful.
Personally, I never enjoyed listening to his recorded CDs -- his habit of 'humming' while playing was really disconcerting.
What was cool about him was that usually stuck to classical or pre-classical repertoire, which was not nearly so popular back then as romantic pieces. What Horowitz and Rubenstein did for Chopin and Liszt, Gould did for Bach. He was a purist too - whenever he played Bach on the piano he would refuse to use the sustain pedal. I know the humming annoyed a lot of people, but it never bugged me too much for some reason.
I’ll stick with Marc-Andre Hamelin.
I never heard of Glenn Gould before.
At age three he could read music and had perfect pitch. At five, he composed music. At 12 he performed his first concert.
He died in 1982 in Toronto. The immediate cause of death was a stroke, hastened no doubt by the fact he was neurotic and had a prescription drug habit.
He rather prematurely withdrew from performing live ("I feel like a vaudevillian") due to the fact he felt he could better serve music from a recording studio than in a concert hall.
He was considered an eccentric for this and was also considered a hermit. But in actuality, he was into many other interests.....among them composing, broadcasting, conducting and experimenting in many aspects of technology.
Friends described him as gentle, kind, funny, charming, warm and loyal. He was a character to be sure, but he never strayed from his pursuit of the ideal in music.
He was and is considered one of the great pianists of the last century.
Leni
Thanks for the reminder.
I think it will be a very, very long time, if ever, before there’s another Glen Gould.
As soon as you hear the playing, you know it’s him.
In some ways I’m reminded of the violin playing by Sergui Luca in that it seems so individual and musical rather than trying to play virtuosically.
I thought the Zenph Studio “re-performance” of the Variations was interesting. Or maybe that’s just the tech geek in me talking. I haven’t seen it publicized much so I’ll link it.
I think Gould’s Goldbergs would be my desert island recording...maybe :)
Something Bach at least.
He kind of looked like Tom Waits at the keys; he was as weird as Waits as well.
Gould was an amazing talent, but I must admit his constant humming annoys the heck outta me.